BBC Astronomer Misses Meteor During Live Show 116
krou writes "BBC astronomer Mark Thompson wasn't having a good night for the BBC's Stargazing Live show. He turned to the camera to complain of poor cloud visibility and a lack of activity in the sky ... only for a meteor to shoot past in the background. A rather sheepish Thompson said, 'I must admit I was oblivious to it. I think I'm probably the only person in the entire country who didn't see it.' (YouTube video of the original live footage)."
Re:And this is news? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Wow, live stargazing is a TV show in England? (Score:5, Interesting)
Look, I love astronomy far more than the average person, but live stargazing - especially in cloudy England - is just about the dullest thing I can think of to bring out what's interesting in the field.
I don't understand why think that the producers of this series of hour-long programmes wouldn't have the same concerns, and ensured that the programmes were not dull?
I watched the first programme. It was presented by well-known physicist/presenter Brian Cox and comedian Dara O'Briain (who has a degree in theoretical physics and does a great routine debunking alternative medicine). They presented a live segment from Jodrell Bank which explained how radio telescopes work and Jodrell Bank's key role in the development of that field. They had a live report from the observatories in Hawaii, explaining what made that such a great location for telescopy, and also looking at how the islands were formed, reminding us about planetary formation and make-up. They took Jonathan Ross (a geeky presenter/celeb) out into a back-yard observatory, aimed the telescope and showed him Jupiter and its four visible moons). They explained the layout of the solar system, and the rotations of the planets, and pointed out that Uranus was currently in conjunction with Jupiter, and how to see it for yourself. They also answered questions that were being texted in by viewers (including a great one: "If there are so many billions of stars, how come it's so dark at night?").
Admittedly not all of this needed to be done live, but doing so gave them a hook to build up a lot of publicity about the programme, and it meant that the energy of the programme was very high, with very appealing and natural approaches by the presenters.
Re:Wow, live stargazing is a TV show in England? (Score:5, Interesting)
Yeh, Flamsteed, Airy, Halley, Moore, Lassell, Hawking, Newton, Herschel, Cox, ... Britain is rubbish for astronomy and all that dull space stuff. Don't know why we British bother, to be honest!
The reason why Newton invented calculus, optics, and the theory of gravitation was to have something to do on all those cloudy nights with rubbish observing. Flamsteed, meanwhile, spent his cloudy nights getting into political fights with Newton, and burning his books in front of the Royal Society during an authorship dispute. Halley headed for Saint Helena's clear skies and warm weather as soon as he graduated from Oxford; when he got back to England he mucked about with building diving bells to pass the time on his cloudy evenings.
Hawking never did any observational astronomy, nor did Cox. Lassell built an observatory in Malta as soon as he could afford to. Herschel composed twenty-four symphonies during his overcast nights.
If there's one conclusion to be drawn, it's that a British astronomer is a frustrated astronomer.