AstrotalkUK – Amateur astronomy in the UK

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Since the launch of Sputnik 1 in 1957, thousands of unmanned spacecraft have been launched, mostly to Earth orbit, but many have gone to the inner and outer planets, and four of them have pretty much left the Solar System altogether.

European Space Agency’s Mars Express spacecraft arrived at Mars in 2003 and is still operating almost a decade later. It is operated by people in a profession initiated by the space age itself. Spacecraft Operations Engineers are the individuals who quietly take over the responsibility of spacecraft after the nerve wrenching excitement of the launch is over.

Thomas Ormston, a Spacecraft Operations Engineer for VEGA Space GmbH, working at the European Space Operations Centre on the European Space agency’s Mars Express mission describes in this episode the steps involved in controlling Mars Express from over one hundred million miles from Earth.

The Hubble Space Telescope is the single instrument that has probably contributed more to science in the last decade than any other. Its success is not the size of its 2.4m mirror, there are many larger telescopes on Earth but its location.

Many amateur astronomers have captured images of Mars using a webcam. Such images are usually tiny but with integration techniques a surprising amount of surface details is visible. What would it be like if you could put that webcam in Martian orbit? Thomas and his colleagues have done just that.

Several ESA spacecraft have an attached Visual Monitoring Cameras (VMC),  usually installed for a very specific purpose. Mars Express had one to monitor the release of Beagle 2, after that it was switched off. Thomas describes the details behind the project that reactivated the camera in a paper published online and the fascinating video compiled from 600 images taken by the VMC webcam during the 7 hour Martian orbit on 27^th May 2010. It continues to take images which are posted here.

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Today’s quote from John Lennon is about the critical importance of the role of human understanding in interpreting the real world, even when you have all the evidence that you could possible desire.

Reality leaves a lot to the imagination

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Audio

Spacecraft Operations Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Episode 39: March 19th 2011 – Spacecraft Operations from AstrotalkUK on Vimeo.

Last year it was Dr Edgar Mitchell from Apollo 14 – video here.  This spring, Ken Willoughby has arranged  Captain Dick Gordon to visit Pontefract. Dick Gordon flew on Gemini 11 and Apollo 12. Details of Dinner and Lecture below. Click here to download the flyer.

Ultimate Combo Package – £85

Dinner AND Lecture and includes:

• ASF Silent Auction of Space Memorabilia
• Access to ASF Astronaut Store Mega Sale
• FREE Professional Photo Op with Gordon
• FREE Gordon Autograph on Professional Photo

Scroll to the bottom of this post to play the audio or watch the video.

Going in to space was nothing more than a dream for many of us for such a long time. But things are changing profoundly and fast. Once human spaceflight was only possible as part of a national government project. Then a decade ago Denis Tito (on 28th April 2001) became the first self funding astronaut by signing a cheque for $20 million.

Now in 2011, Spaceflight has never been easier or cheaper. Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic has now brought the price down to $200,000 for a brief suborbital flight. Imagine spaceflight for the price less than that of a small house in London. In the year that marks the 50th anniversary of human spaceflight, it is about time isn’t it?

A familiar name in the astronomical community, Nigel Henbest a writer, broadcaster and television producer took a not too deep breath and signed on the dotted line and is now on the road to his space experience in the next year or two.

As the private sector develops  perhaps the commercial spaceflight market will experience the same rapid innovation and price reduction we  saw in the personal computer market. Is it too speculative to imagine that within a few years the price of a sub orbital flight will come down perhaps to that of a family car?

In this episode Nigel, talks about why he wants to go in to space and the steps involved in the process of getting there.  Nigel has written about his flight here and to see a high resolution image of the huge Virgin Galactic brochure click the image.

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This episode’s quote

You see things and say why? But I dream things that never were and say why not?
George Bernard Shaw

Listen to Audio [ 31:59 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Want to be an astronaut? from AstrotalkUK on Vimeo.

5/1/2011: Today is the last of the  hour long “Stargazing Live”  programs on BBC2 at 8pm with a comic Dara O Briain and a scientist Professor Brian Cox. But it is not over today!  Events continue until at least 16th January nationwide – See bbc.co.uk/stargazing.

Free tonight and in the northwest? Pop down at about 8pm to  Manchester Astronomical Society or Salford Astronomical Society’s observatory and stargaze in person  (record the program and watch it later).

As a result of change of speaker at a short notice, I will be speaking at Salford Astronomical Society’s annual Christmas lecture. This is a free talk and open to all members of the public.

The title is “Yuri Gagarin in Manchester“. This will be an early start to the 50th anniversary commemorations next year of Gagarin’s historic flight on 12th April 1961 and his visit three months later to Manchester on 12th July.

This talk is at 19:30 on Wednesday 15th December 2010 at the University of Salford.
Venue is lecture theatre room 115, Maxwell Building, University of Salford, The Crescent, Salford, M5 4WT.  Map available here.

Scroll to the bottom of this post to play the audio.

On November 3rd this year, Professor Jim Al-khalili was to give three lectures in Liverpool on the same day (Quantum Physics, Advances in Mathematics in Medieval Islam and On the Shoulders of Eastern Giants: the Forgotten Contribution of the Medieval Physicists). I did feel a bit of a stalker, I attended all three, but fortunately I was not alone.

It is not often that I get to personally witness the scientific method in real life. The most illuminating part of the day of the three lectures was the the Q and A following the second lecture. A questioner put her hand up and stated clearly that she had a correction rather than a question. She had heard the professor talk about the concept and symbol for the number zero. During his lecture, the professor had recalled the contribution from the Babylonians, Mayans and Indian mathematicians. The questioner had been researching the substantial contribution from the Egyptians in this area which the professor had not mentioned. What happened next was an affirmation of the scientific method.

The professor could have been defensive, confrontational or dismissive. Instead, he listened to her argument and asked her to stay behind to so he could learn details of her research. That is the power of the scientific idea. It stands only on the edifice of evidence and not the economic wealth, social position or academic reputation of those who hold it.

The progress of scientific knowledge is not continuous and linear but evolves through a series of stops and starts. Thomas Kuhn, in his 1962 book “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions” described the progress of science as periodic “paradigm shifts”. He was referring to the fundamental differences in thinking that have lead to leaps in scientific understanding.

Could that stop and start concept describe how science develops through the ages too? Scientific discoveries are frequently lost, forgotten or deliberately suppressed. So the story of scientific discovery is frequently a story of rediscovery. William Harvey ‘s discovery in 1628 of the human heart and circulation of blood though the human body had much in common with that of Ibn al-Nafis 400 years earlier. Nicolas Copernicus is credited in the 16^th century with introducing the heliocentric system (placing the Sun not the Earth, in the centre of the solar system) but this idea had been propounded by Aristarchus in the third century BC.

The omissions are not just in science. One example of technological development lost for over a thousand years that sticks out like a sore thumb is the Antikythera mechanism, a device for calculating and displaying relative positions of the Sun, Moon and planets. The precision of the internal mechanism would not be repeated for over a thousand years.

Why these omissions occur is unclear. History, like science is always a work in progress. Reflecting on why the ancient Greek tradition of scientific method stalled, Carl Sagan in his celebrated work, Cosmos, concluded that their society was elitist and self serving. Key figures like Plato were hostile to experiment and perpetuated the idea that human thought alone was sufficient to explain the physical world. This intellectually corrupt approach sustained their slave owning unjust society. Search for truth was not their goal.

In his new book “Pathfinders” Professor Al-Khalili attempts to fill “a” gap in the history of science by revisiting the work done by the Arabic scholars during the period known in Europe as the dark ages. It is not a story of Islamic science but of science conducted in the Arabic language which has its roots in Islam. For around 600 years (from 9^th to the 15^th century), sandwiched between Greek and Latin, the international language of science was Arabic.

A professor of theoretical nuclear physics in the University of Surrey, he was born in Baghdad to a Christian mother and a Muslim father. As an atheist , Jim Al-Khalili, emphasizes the role of Islamic, Persian, Christian and Jewish scholars who not only translated the work of the ancient Greeks but enhanced and developed it. Just as the ancient Greeks took the concept of an alphabet from the earlier Phoenician civilization and developed the written language, the scientific (re)discoveries we traditionally associate with the European Renaissance were built in turn on the progress during this golden age of Arabic science.

Professor Jim Al-Khalili has his own podcast but here is a recording we made for this one just prior to the start of his three lecture session. To start off with, I asked about his personal interest in astronomy.

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The quote for this episode is from the prophet Mohammed and in chapter 2 of Pathfinders.

“The ink of the scholar is more sacred than the blood of the martyr”

Progress of Science throgh the Ages [ 19:17 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Next year April 12th  2011 marks the 50th anniversary of Yuri Gagarin’s,  mankind’s,  first steps  into space. It was a product of the accumulated technology of many countries over many years but particularly driven by the the political landscape resulting from the 2nd world war. Since then successful robotic missions have visited the planets, asteroids and comets. 24 men have gone to the moon and a dozen have even walked on its surface.

Subsequent achievements have fallen short of the expectations raised in the wake of Gagarin’s flight. Gagarin himself  spoke openly about his desire to go to the moon and Mars. That sounds like a pipe dream now but back in 1961, he was absolutely serious and realistic.

So what happened? Had the space race been won when Neil and Buzz landed on the Moon? Had the motivation borne out of political rivalries of the cold war finally been exhausted? Perhaps, the problems closer at home of poverty, population growth, environmental concerns  raced to the top of the political agenda and forced  governments into a pragmatic reconsideration on how they spent their cash?

Big questions. Too big for this episode where Dr Chris Welch from Kingston University provides a brief outline of the current status of the Space policy here in the UK.   Dr Welch  also happens to be the chair of the of the recently launched YuriGagarin50 group which has amongst its aims:

Stimulate celebration and recognition of the global significance of Gagarin and his flight – ‘the first person in space, the first person to see the Earth as a planet’.

After his flight Yuri Gagarin embarked on a world tour which included a 4 day visit to the UK which surprisingly included a visit to Manchester on 12th July 1961. By chance, Gagarin’s first job was as a moulder in a foundry in Moscow.   He came to the UK and Manchester at the invitation of the Manchester based Amalgamated Union of Foundry Workers. I will be producing another episode  focusing on Gagarin’s UK visit next year. Did you see Gagarin in July 1961? Do you know someone who did? Share your memories. Drop me a note at info@astrotalkuk.org.

With many months to go to next year’s 50th anniversary, there are several events already being planned  to celebrate mankind’s first steps in to space. Keep an eye on the events calendar at  www.yurigagarin50.org

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The quote for this episode is from the Soviet government in 1961 following Gagarin’s success in Vostok 1. Perhaps they were deliberately winding up the Americans but there is something warm and reassuring to see a couple of familiar words in the quote  “all mankind” that are on the plaque left on the Moon by the Apollo 11 astronauts. A 1961 official Soviet Government and Communist Party announcement said.

“We regard these victories in the conquest of outer space not only as the achievement of our people but as an achievement of all mankind”

A video version of this podcast is available on Vimeo here.

UK Space Policy and Gagarin's visit to the UK Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

The Perseid meteor shower is widely accepted to be  the best in the bunch available throughout the year. With only the waxing crescent Moon setting early, 2010 is likely to be the  best for many years.

The Zenith Hourly Rate (ZHR) predicted to be between 70 and 100  but only in dark cloud free skies.  With luck we may even see some fireballs.

The shower is the result of the dust particles  left in the path of the Earth’s orbit by comet Swift Tuttle burning up as they hit the atmosphere at 40 miles per second. The radiant (the constellation of Perseus, just below and to the the left  of the “W” of Cassiopeia) reaches an altitude of 55 degrees  at about 3am on Friday 13th. But that’s just the peak. There is lots of activity a few days either side.

Not very astronomical but may be of interest, especially if you are in the Northwest England and express geeky tendencies. You may be aware that Astrotalkuk.org uses an extremely popular blogging platform called WordPress. No? No matter.

WordPress users and developers around the world have an annual get togethers to talk about the latest developments in WordPress through something called “Wordcamp”. The first UK Wordcamp was in Birmingham in 2008, Cardiff last year and next weekend it comes to Manchester. More here.

I recorded this interview with Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little WordPress founding developers last year. Here is another minute and a half of “silliness” not included in the original recording.

Matt turned up at Cardiff wearing a hat. He posted a picture on his blog displaying the odd haircut which triggered the hat but I cannot find it now. Matt – next time you attend a wordcamp in the UK wearing a hat, make it a stetson, we won’t let you in otherwise:) You are a Texan!

As per my post in April and thanks to a co-operative volcano, Dr Ed Mitchell, Lunar Module pilot for Apollo 14 will be in Pontefract tomorrow evening at 19:30 on Friday 2nd July 2010. Tickets at £30 are available at the door, for all the details download this one page word document.

He is actually arriving early this morning. If you are in or can get to Pontefract (West Yorkshire, UK)  today, you can even have dinner and have your photograph taken with Ed Mitchell this evening. Contact Ken Willoughby  on 01977 795535 or   07561085440.

Nestling in a valley amongst the rolling green hills of the Eifel region of western Germany is the 100m Effelsberg steerable radio telescope. Similar to the Lovell telescope at Jodrell Bank which is on the plains of Cheshire in northwest England which can be seen from miles away. The  Effelsberg telescope  is situated in a valley so it easy to pass close by and not see it.

It is an international facility. Participating in Very Long Base Interferometry (VLBI) where physical links are necessary with other countries it also hosts astronomers from many other countries  and participates in global research projects. Although its website may appear a littel dated, Effelsberg has a surprisingly rich online presence including the current schedule and of course the now mandatory webcam.

Effelsberg is a leading player in a new international project called LOw Frequency ARray or LOFAR.  Lofar targets the low frequency range between 10MHZ and 250MHZ. However, for many years commercial FM radio stations, the local emergency services and the aviation industry have been using frequencies between 90MHZ and 108MHZ so Lofar range is split in to two bands. Low (10-90MHZ) and high (108 – 250MHZ). Thus there are in fact three telescopes at Effelsberg.

On a recent visit, Dr Norbert Junkes talked about the previous, current and new activities taking place at Effelsberg.

Episode 34 [Audio] Effelsberg Radio Telescope [ 0:20 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Episode 34 [Video] Effelsberg Radio Telescope [ 0:01 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Have you come across a non profit website TED? It’s primary goal to share ideas in Technology, Entertainment and Design, ideas it deems as worthy of sharing.

I bumped in to a video on TED about dictionaries. Interesting in its own right but it caught my attention because the presenter, Erin Mckean an American lexicographer, referred to Micheal Oates’ descovery of comets without the use of a telescope as an example  of fresh thinking. In her 2007 video, she was challenging the traditional definition of a dictionary.

Mike has many talents, amateur astronomy is just one. He is a member of Manchester Astronomical Society.

It is worth browsing TED.COM, packed full of interesting short (typically 20 minute) videos. Here are  couple of my favourites

Michael Specter Defending Science

Clifford Stoll -  Astronomy, computers and education.

Well guess what? In the early hours of this morning the air control body extended the non-emergency flight restrictions to 19:00 this evening (I expect that to be extended). Consequently, Ken Willoughby has informed me that Ed Mitchell’s visit will not take place today.

The visit will be rescheduled and details will be published once finalised. In the meantime, some interesting links.

• An ESA animation of the ash cloud over Europe.
• Radar image from flightglobal,com of one lonely plane in UK air space this morning
• Dramatic pictures of volcanic eruption. Here’s another apparently from the farmer of owns *this* farm in Iceland.
• Ash cloud predictions from the metoffice
• http://www.flightradar24.com/ shows live air traffic information. Ironically, too many users and I could not connect!

The current situation is that the Edgar Mitchell will arrive and tomorrow evening’s presentation will go ahead as planned.

The evening meal originally scheduled for tonight will take place on Saturday evening for those who can make it.

To repeat this is the current picture. I’ll post further updates as I recieve them.

The recent volcanic activity in Iceland has resulted in high levels of volcanic ash in the higher atmosphere  over many parts of Europe.  The prevailing weather has pushed dangerous amounts of it over the UK.  Flights over Scotland have been grounded since this morning and now the aviation authorities have called for an end to all air traffic (except emergencies) for 6 hours  in UK airspace from midday  until 18:00 (BST) today.

One of the fligfhts impacted has been Dr Ed Mitchell’s from the US. He should be in the UK now but is not. Thus the program for today has been cancelled. Volcanism and weather are highly unpredictable. I hope to get an update later today regarding the program for tomorrow.

An oversight on my part (can’t count) I accidentally skipped episode 31 and went to 32. To avoid messing up database records and associated hyperlinks, I will not be going back to episode 31 so the next one will be episode 33. Episode 32 will remain for ever  in some multi dimensional episode void.

So don’t be looking for something that does not exist. Even if your name is Hans Blix.

Want to know what’s in the night sky for this month? Tune in to Chris Northen’s  radio show between 09:00 and 10:00 on  allfm 96.9

Manchester Astronomical Society’s member Mike Oates presents “sky notes” on the first Friday of each month.

Yes, you can listen online. Next broadcast – tomorrow morning.

In size, mass and orbit Venus is the nearest Earth has to a twin in the Solar System. It is the brightest object in the sky after the sun and moon, hottest planet in the solar system, has a day longer than its year, is named after the Roman goddess of love and yet it has a deadly atmosphere and its the one planet that gets closer to the Earth than any other.

In this episode, recorded in late 2008, Professor Fred Taylor, Jesus College Oxford, talks about the Venus Express mission.

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This week’s quote is my rather obtuse reference to the runaway greenhouse effect on the planet Venus. Its from Will Rogers and its what he says to his niece on  seeing Venus de Milo in the Louvre in Paris.

“See what will happen if you don’t stop biting your fingernails?”

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You will have noticed that I’m not quite on schedule right now. Indeed have not been so for a few weeks. As a one man band I expect that to happen from time to time. Last week however was special. For the very first time, I became a dad. Both my wife Regine and my daughter – Amrita Christine May-Singh are well and healthy.

I have some projects underway for Astrotalkuk and will resume a more regular pattern in the coming weeks and months.

Just over a week ago, WordPress 2.6 was released. I updated and everything was working fine. I have run in to a problem when I attempted to upload episode 23. It turns out that the plugin I use for this – called Podpress, is not compatible with Worpress 2.6. For existing episodes its fine but I cannot upload anything new.

An updated version of the plugin should be available early next week. Rather than regress to WordPress version 2.51 I will wait a few days. So middle of next week if not before, it should be back to “normal”.

Something different.

If you are even only a tiny bit of a techie, you will be aware of the huge impact of WordPress – the open source blogging platform, is having in the online community worldwide. Indeed, AstrotalkUK runs on WordPress.

From time to time,  the WordPress community gets together for a day or two to talk, mingle, learn and socialise with other wordpress bloggers, designers, developers or just about anyone who is interested in or connected to WordPress. They call these events  “Wordcamp”.  They have taken place around the globe and on the weekend of July 19th and 20th, the UK contingent will have one of our own in Birmingham. I’ll be there. Its 35 quid for the two days of talks, presentations,  social events. Interested? More here.

The 24 hour downtime wasn’t planned. A  loss of some config files on Sunday evening at my webshost (IXwebhost) took much longer to recover than I had expected. Infact I am still waiting for them to contact me! I now know much more about cgi-bin folder, .htaccess file and hsphere than is healthy. Thanks to regular automated backups that no data was lost. Nice to be back.

About 20 years after Galileo used the telescope for astronomy, William Crabtree and Jeremiah Horrocks used it to observe a transit of Venus in 1639. Carl Barry and Lilian Fletcher researched documented this unique event. If you missed it a 19mb video here.
Former executive Paul Allen (Allen Telescope Array) from Microsoft and Wayne Rosing (LSST Observatory) from Google are modern examples of private investors in space research.

Emerging from the the industrial revolution in the 19th century Lancashire were two similar individuals who contributed to making large mirrors and large telescopes. James Naysmith and William Lassell.

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Its been a busy week – Space conference and Buzz Aldrin’s visit – more  in coming episodes. Episode 9 should have gone out yesterday. I’m late. You may not be aware but Astrotalkuk uses WordPress (WP). Version 2.5 was released this weekend. So over the next few days I hope to upload Episode 9, upgrade to WP 2.5 and fix the RSS link so Itunes (or other podcast reader) will pick up each episode automatically.

The Astronomy Centre: If you head east out of the Lancashire town of Bacup along the A681 towards the Yorkshire town of Todmorden, a couple of miles up a snaking undulating road, nestled amongst the green hills, wild flowers and the sheep you see on your left two large astronomical domes. This is the home of the Astronomy Centre.

Founded by Peter Drew, it is the largest dedicated resource for the amatuer astronomers in the country. A not for profit venture, the astronomy centre has been developed and maintained by a diverse team of skilled, dedicated and industrious volunteers.

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Amateur Astronomy – the next generation? In the 1960s and 70s astronomy did not have the competition from computer games, internet and TV. That apparently is what is keeping the young people away from participating in astronomy. Guy Fennimore, secretary of the Society for Popular Astronomy (SPA), suggests that astronomy is not the only victim and describes the SPA’s “young stargazers initiative”.

Roger Pickard, the president of the British Astronomical Association, recounts the days of committed amateurs who made the telescopes they used and asserts the ongoing strong relationship between amateur and professional astronomers.

This recording took place at Astrofest 2008, apologies for the occasional noisy background.

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