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Wednesday, May 31, 2006
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How to.. do Astronomy
FOR some reason people often assume I am a sci-fi fan.
Maybe it’s the clothes I wear. Maybe it’s my pale hue caused by far too many hours in theatres, clubs, cinemas and in front of the box.
Maybe it’s the fact that on bad days, my hair shoots up so I look like Art Garfunkel after an electrical accident.
Whatever the reason they are all wrong.
The works of Isaac Asimov leave me cold. My idea of hell is watching an episode of Star Trek, let alone a season.
And during 2001: A Space Odyssey, I was looking at my watch after the first five minutes of sun-rises.
But space itself is a different story. There is something fascinating about looking up at the night sky on a clear evening.
So the idea of looking up at the stars with the Peterborough Astronomical Society was something I was looking forward to.
The society meets once a month at the Lakeside Centre in Orton Longueville – probably the highest point in the city to avoid some of the light pollution.
It has been meeting since 1987 and at present has 15 members, of all ages and both genders.
I was instantly made to feel welcome with the offer of a cup of tea in advance of a talk by visiting speaker John Brown on nebulae.
Nebulae are formed when a star can no longer support itself causing the inside to heat up and the outside of the star to be driven away in a stellar wind.
The talk itself was illustrated by fascinating slides that looked like something from either a Salvador Dali dream or a science fiction writer’s imagination.
But all of the stars and constellations shown could be seen using telescopes, in fact several had been seen by the group itself, and many had originally been spotted by the world’s earliest astronomers simply by looking up into the less-polluted night sky.
My head was soon spinning with the talk of millions and billions of light years – distances that the human mind simply cannot comprehend – and the fact that a thousand years is a very small period of time in space terms.
But it wasn’t so overly technical that I felt lost, and when I was shown some of the constellations out in the night sky after the talk the distances and huge numbers seemed to trip off the tongue of many of the more experienced astronomers.
Gerry Holland, secretary of the group, showed me how to find Saturn in the night sky, whereas before all I could pick out were the three stars that make up Orion’s belt.
He had become hooked on astronomy while on holiday.
He said: “I looked up on the beach where there was no light pollution and saw them all there. I didn’t have a clue what was up there but someone showed me Saturn and I was hooked!
“I only got my first telescope eight months ago and I saw the rings of Saturn.
“It is all about knowing where to look.”
The group regularly holds special nights to coincide with astronomical events such as comets passing close to Earth, and star parties including an annual barbecue in founder member Bill Cowley’s garden where everyone can have a turn on his powerful telescope.
The group also holds four special lectures a year at its monthly meetings.
I was certainly looking up at the night sky in a different way on my way home.