Chris Lintott’s Universe

This month’s Prospect has an article about the status of Pluto. Why do I bring up this old, old news? Because there’s a competition attached. They promise a ‘space themed prize’ for the best suggestion for a new memonic for the planets in the solar system. The old ones, the most popular of which was ‘My Very Easy Method Just Speeds Up Naming Planets’, just don’t work any more…

When I worked on the newspaper for the 2000 IAU general assembly, we tried something similar for new spectral classes of stars. The old memonic then was ‘Oh Be A Fine Girl Kiss Me Right Now. Smack!’ (or Slap, depending on preference) but with the new classes of stars added we needed to remember (from hottest to coldest) OBAFGKMLT. Most suggestions were unprintable, but just over the borderline was Officially, Bill Always Felt Guilty Kissing Monica Lewinsky’s Thighs. It certainly stuck in my mind, and hopefully someone will suggest something as good for Prospect.

If you want to enter, email info AT prospect-magazine.co.uk, replacing AT with the usual symbol.

One more post for today – an observing challenge for you all.

Asteroid 57424 (think of the number as a date) has now been named Caelumnoctu in honour of the Sky at Night (we weren’t allowed skyatnight as it isn’t a real word). It’s a main belt asteroid, orbiting the Sun once every 5 years or so, and I would love an image of it. I think it’s near conjunction (behind the Sun) right now, but I’ll find a prize for the first astrophotographer to send me one.

Just noticed the interview I did for the Guardian about Sunshine has appeared on the website. Mind you, you heard it here first.

We had a fantastic 50th birthday party for the Sky at Night a couple of days ago, on the actual anniversary of the first transmission. More than 250 guests turned up (Patrick was hosting an overflow party for 200 or so more yesterday!) and we filmed what felt like hundreds of interviews which you’ll get to see in the next program (broadcast May 6th), along with the best of the archive.

My favourite moments are pictured below. The first shows Patrick with his five surviving producers; from left to right Pat Owtram (9 years), Pat Wood (about 4, I think), Pieter Morpurgo (almost 20), Ian Russell (3, and the producer of the first shows I appeared on) and Jane Fletcher (5 and counting). All deserve much more credit than they get, so it was great to see them all.

The MC for the party was the astronaut Piers Sellers. I’d missed the filming for Patrick’s January interview and so it was wonderful to have a chance to talk to him (the photo below was at the end of a very long night…). Hopefully we’ll hear more from him on the programme soon.

Currently sitting in a lecture by Mike Lockwood on the effect of the Sun on space travel. He’s just shown this amazing image, which shows the bow shock around a young star called LL Orionis. If you look above and just to the left of centre, you’ll see an arc. This is the shock where a wind from the young star is hitting the surrounding material.

The good news is that although the Sun throws energetic particles at us, its magnetic field does keep nasty high energy cosmic rays (not rays at all, but high energy particles) away from the inner part of the Solar System.

…but all of this high energy radiation damages cells, and can even trigger their self destruct mechanism. This is obviously damaging, although experiments have shown that changes won’t be passed on to the next generation (as the cells just die). A single event is likely to expose astronauts (or those living on the Moon) to more than the guideline lifetime recommend dose; we were very lucky during Apollo as many of the missions just missed major events. An exceptionally massive event between Apollos 16 and 17 would have killed the astronauts.

A couple of minutes left; the solutions. We should be researching layers of shielding (like this). The timing of the mission could be crucial, but the decision isn’t easy. Perhaps we should head to Mars at solar maximum, as this provides the maximum protection from cosmic rays (and hope to hide from the solar effects). In short, more work needed!

It was great to feature the results from the IPHAS survey in the Sky at Night newsnotes a few months ago, especially the amazing image of the Rosette nebula below. The survey is also featured in the Guardian today, although there’s a classic subeditor’s error. The headline is ‘Rosette Nebula captured on film” – I know the INT is an old telescope, but I’m really sure they’re not using film any more.

For the rest of the images, see Nick Wright’s gallery page.

Tonight’s question time from the National Astronomy Meeting will be broadcast live online. To join me, along with Jocelyn Bell, Lucie Green and Don Kurtz go here. We’re live from 7.30pm BST.

It’s nice to see that we’ve been recognised in Parliament, even if there are a couple of small errors. (The 650th programme was in January, and the anniversary programmes will be broadcast usual on the 1st Sunday of the month).

How do you get closer to outer space without leaving the surface of the Earth? Climb a hill, or better, a mountain. You might think that the closest you could get to the Moon would be climbing to the summit of Mount Everest, but I’d like to introduce you to Mount Chimborazo in Ecuador, closer to outer space than Everest.

Full story at NPR.

As part of next week’s National Astronomy Meeting in Preston, I’ll be appearing on a very distinguished panel* for Astronomy Question Time. Feel free to come along (free tickets needed in advance) or watch online.

* – Distinguished in this case means ‘has appeared on Sky at Night, or works for the BBC’.