Have I mentioned how much I liked this month’s Sky at Night episode (even if I look like I could do with a week or so of sleep)? Yes? Well, let me point out anyway that it’s now up on our watch again page so those of you beyond these shores can listen to our discussion of cosmology and what we don’t know about the Universe.
I’m rather proud of May’s Sky at Night; with a more informal format than usual, we used the excuse of it being program number 666 to look at the devils haunting modern cosmology, the things that we don’t yet know. Our guests, Gerry Gilmore from Cambridge and Kate Land from Oxford did a fantastic job, Patrick stirred things up as usual and I hope it will give a different perspective on what exactly the state of play is.
If you’re in the UK you can watch it on the BBC’s iplayer, otherwise I’ll post a link when it’s on our website. Or, of course, you could just watch BBC2 on Saturday at the later than usual time of 2.40 pm.
I’ve just returned from Texas to find that the world may be ending. Patrick’s beloved Woodstock typewriter, owned since he was nine and used for every one of his books, is finally giving up the ghost. With only his two middle fingers, he could type accurately on it at 90 words a minute and it was a terrifying sight. Patrick describes its finest moment:
“NASA were producing a book about the Moon. I was asked to write the chapter on lunar transient phenomena, which I did. I then had a letter back from the NASA editor. ‘Dear Patrick. Thank you for your chapter: it is exactly right. Right length, right attitude, right references. I am delighted with it, and it will go straight to press. Also congratulations - you are the first author to send in his chapter.’ Underneath, in pencil : ‘What the bloody hell did you type it on?’ Sadly, it now needs the services of an expert mechanic. Unfortunately they all seem busy with trifling things such as sending rockets to the Moon. I have had to put everything on hold. Help!”
If you can help Patrick’s poor typewriter, please get in touch. (But you might want to beware a mob of angry publishers - they’ve been waiting for Patrick to convert to a word processor for decades.).
I feel like I’ve been plugging Sky at Night for weeks, but the Last Man on the Moon programme is now available online here. I’m seriously extremely proud of this interview, and insist you all watch it.
Cheers, Chris
More interesting writing soon, but I wanted to remind you about tonight’s BBC 4 EXTENDED Sky at Night interview with Apollo astronaut Eugene Cernan. The BBC 2 repeat is next Saturday at midday.
Sky at Night team and important person in Apollo Mission Control. From left to right Rob (camera), Me (Waffle), Jane (Producer, Director and coffee maker), Captain Cernan (LMotM*) and Martin (sound). The certificates in the background are proclamations ‘retiring’ colours of flight controllers. Gene Kranz, for example, the controller who led the rescue of Apollo 13, was white flight and since his retirement no-one has used that call sign. After more than 40 years, though, they’re running out of colours. Sadly, rather than chose wonders as ‘beige flight’ (or ‘puce flight’) they’ve moved on to metals instead.
NASA’s worst nightmare; having me in the flight director’s seat is an obvious mistake. Can you spot the other glaring error in the picture?.
* LMotM = Last Man on the Moon
I went up to Birmingham to record the voiceover for the interview with Eugene Cernan, which included a sneak preview of the programme. I’m really pleased with it; the team have done a great job of cutting down nearly two hours of interview while keeping the best bits. There are a few surprising comments, and a couple of stories that send a shiver down your spine. As the modest man I am, I don’t always plug the programme on the blog, but this one really is required watching, if only for some of the shots that the team have pulled out of the archives.
BBC One : Sunday night (early Monday morning) 00:45
BBC Four EXTENDED EDITION (Watch this one if you can) : Monday evening 19:30
But what if you can’t wait until Sunday or Monday for your Sky at Night? If you have access to BBC4 you don’t have to! Tonight there’s a repeat of our meteor special (the filming for which was one of the more surreal nights of my life). That’s on at 19.30. Then this Sunday is satellite night on BBC4, and our contribution looks at the British contribution to the space age. That’s 20.30 on BBC 4.
Enjoy. (And if you’re not in the UK, remember all of these will end up on the magazine cover disc, and the Cernan interview will land on the website before too long.
This month’s Sky at Night has been shifted all over the place. Sunday’s first episode was late, and the BBC4 extended edition which was supposed to go out yesterday will now go out NEXT Monday, the 9th, at 8.30pm. The repeat on BBC2 will be on Sunday at 12pm (although if the Wimbledon schedule continues to slip who knows).
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.
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.
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).
