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)."
And this is news? (Score:5, Insightful)
It wasn't even a stupid mistake on his part. This is like someone blinking just when someone else is taking a picture. Bad timing. Is this truly newsworthy?
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Re:And this is news? (Score:4, Funny)
Wow! Ok, that IS news.
Re:And this is news? (Score:4, Informative)
I knew somebody who blinked in around 95% of photos. Even a fake count-down didn't throw them off.
Actually, that's fairly common. Most camera's use a short pre-flash to adjust their light levels when you press the shutter button. This is followed a few milliseconds later by the actual flash used to take the picture. Some people with sensitive eyes will blink at the pre-flash and end up with their eyes closed in most flash pictures.
I used to have a Nikon DSLR camera that could be programmed to emit the pre-flash when a certain button was pressed. I'd hit the pre-flash button first, then take the actual picture (sans pre-flash) a few seconds later. Worked miracles for my wife who is a blinker.
My new camera (a newer Nikon DSLR) doesn't see to make people blink, so either it doesn't use a pre-flash, or it's so fast that there's no time for people to react.
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no, no. the news is the comment for the second video "this comment will randomly get lots of thumbs up.", which did get lots of thumbs up.
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You've just expressed the sentiments of everyone who watched the program, and have been harshly moderated down as a result
Re:And this is news? (Score:4, Insightful)
I think its pretty amazing that it was possible to see a meteor in the UK.
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That was no meteor.
That was a politician kicked in his hiney!
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I missed this show as I was out watching the meteors :(.
Meteors happen all the time (Score:2)
During meteor showers, which happen at predictable times every year, one can watch several meteors per minute. It's nothing out of the ordinary.
It's almost like saying "astronomer overslept and missed sunrise" in an ordinary day.
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Wow, it happened to you, too! (Score:2)
What a coincidence, go figure! While you were posting your complaint ("waaaah!"), you totally missed out on the amusement of the story posted that was right there at the top of the page the whole time that the rest of us saw!
A similar thing happened on Sept. 11, 2001 (Score:2)
Wow, live stargazing is a TV show in England? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Wow, live stargazing is a TV show in England? (Score:5, Informative)
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I prefer the real deal.
I do too! But I don't live in New Jersey, so I have to watch them on TV.
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Re:Wow, live stargazing is a TV show in England? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Except it wasn't just stargazing was it. It was essentially astronomy and cosmology with al fresco theme.
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Re:Wow, live stargazing is a TV show in England? (Score:5, Informative)
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.
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I'm glad you finally realized that,now we can tackle the issue of you calling 'soccer', football~
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.
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Stargazing, over three nights when there was A partial Lunar Eclipse, A meteor shower, a guide to how to use a telescope and how to navigate around the sky, and reports and interviews from Mauna Kea ....
One small part of this (very small due to the unsurprising cloudy conditions) was this astronomer stargazing live .... which was joked about by the presenters because they knew there was total cloud cover on two of the nights ...
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How dare they fulfil their public service obligations by showing a culturally diverse range of programming rather than endless reality shows and soaps!
Is it the programming language?
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[2] Not of Gaelic spelling rules, though.
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Probably no worse than the 3-hour long magic bullet/juicer/mixer [pro] BS we Canadians have to endure after 2am.
But it can't miss.
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Actually the ratings were very respectable for BBC2:-
1st night : 3.393 million, 11.7% share
2nd night: 3.048 million, 11.8% share
3rd night: 2.706 million, 11.3% share,
plus about an extra 200,000 each night watching on BBC HD. The BBC views it as success, so expect something similar in the future.
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If you live in the UK, it's our cash, not theirs. Not that they spend it in any kind of representative manner. While it is true that this kind of show is closer to their public service remit than the vast majority of their soap/reality/cooking/make-over show output, it still wasn't very good quality.
It's been so long since the BBC has had to actually t
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Let me guess.. Radio 4 listener...
On the whole, the documentaries that the BBC produces is better than any other broadcaster, public or private in any other country in the anglosphere. I've lived in 4, and the BBC produces the best "factual" programming by far.
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And as he nicely plugged during the show, he has a new series "Wonders of the Universe" starting in March.
Personally I found this an interesting set of programmes. Yes there was some filler, but it was nice to see something vaguely intelligent on TV. All the old semi-heavyweight documentaries on UK TV have either disappeared (Equinox), or turned into a kind of lightweight, 'look what our CG department can do' fluffy documentary series (Horizon; see also Panorama).
I still miss impenetrable Geometry program
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And also in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, too. The B in BBC is "British", not "English", dear.
Northern Ireland is not in Great Britain (although the BBC does serve the folks there). If you're going to be pedantic, do it right.
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Also, if I wanted to be even more of a pedant myself, I would say you cannot be pedantic, you can only be a pedant.
So, if you want to be a pedant, get it right yourself!
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Some people may think NI should belong to Ireland but currently it does not.
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Plenty of people on both sides of the pond recognize "Britain" as the UKoGBaNI.
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No, Bob Ross is not on BBC.
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we don't give a flying fuck where you get your paint, but rather where do you get the mood altering substance that makes observation of drying so fascinating?
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http://online.wsj.com [wsj.com]
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Does the BBC also have a "live watching paint dry" show?
Yes, Several. "live" Cricket, Star Trek, election coverage, darts, tiddlywinks, chess etc. etc.
Sowat? (Score:5, Insightful)
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You have to understand. This is the Daily Mail we're talking about. It's written by idiots for idiots. In other news, Aliens conspired with the Queen to have Princess Diana assasinated by falling house prices, and every single item in the world can be divided into those that either cure cancer or cause cancer. Drivel such as "BBC suck because man cannot see things that are behind him" is just par for the course for these drooling simps.
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It's pretty funny though...
Idle (Score:1)
Not worth the retelling (Score:2)
This is one of those things which was slightly amusing to witness when it happened, but loses everything in the retelling. It's not news, it's barely even an anecdote.
And I'd point out the three nights of live stargazing was scheduled to straddle the partial solar eclipse on Tuesday.
Also they were using imagine intensifiers (Score:5, Informative)
... so even if he had been facing it it wouldn't have been nearly as bright to his eyes as it was on the camera. In fact it might have been too dim to see at all with the naked eye.
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Oops - my bad. Imagination intensifiers, that would be cool! :)
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It was brighter than any stars in the camera field of view, which were not visible at all. Either the camera wasn't that sensitive, or the cloud cover was too thick.
In either case, this meteor had to be very bright.
Wha? (Score:2)
What a stupid summary. The guy was facing the camera, and the meteor appeared behind his back. Are we expecting astronomers to have eyes in the back of their head now?
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The sad thing about this? It seems that a lot of people on Slashdot seem to expect the same thing. Nothing better than the armchair pseudo-scientists who belittle others over some
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Sheesh. Lighten up. I submitted the story because I thought it was amusing, not because I thought he was an idiot for not seeing it; the guy had been waiting patiently in a field on a cold night for ages to see something, but just when he had to talk to the camera, there goes the meteorite. The only thing I expected from Slashdot was for people to have a little giggle, not because he didn't have eyes in the back of his head, or because he isn't Merlin, but because of the situation.
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The only thing I expected from Slashdot was for people to have a little giggle
You must be new here.
Slashdot confirms it (Score:2, Informative)
Must be some really nice stuff the editors are smoking for this to pass as front page material.
But getting paid for missing it ... (Score:1)
I think I'm probably the only person in the entire country who didn't see it.
"But I was paid a tidy sum to appear on the telly, so fuck the god-damned meteor ."
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I think I'm probably the only person in the entire country who didn't see it.
"But I was paid a tidy sum to appear on the telly, so fuck the god-damned meteor ."
Meteoric porn?
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a total non story ... (Score:1)
Mark Thompson, a television reporter missed the meteor because he was addressing a television camera ...
Would this have been visible without Night Vision? (Score:2)
Anyone who's ever gone looking for meteors knows the feeling: the people you're with see a great one just as you were looking the other way --- it's almost part of the fun ;) --- so I agree that I don't find this very newsworthy... However, I'm also wondering how much the fact that this was being shot with a Night Vision camera (as the caption on the bottom left seems to imply?) would have affected the visibility of the meteor; in other words, even if the reporter had been looking straight at the meteor, wo
yes and no (Score:2)
Would this have been visible without Night Vision?
The meteor would have been visible, but the presentor wouldn't.
Daily Mail is moronic (Score:5, Insightful)
The last time I had the misfortune to have my brain polluted by a Daily Mail story was when sitting bored in a physio's waiting room.
Flipping the rag open at random, I see a headline something like:
87% of Britons now members of a persecuted minority
this little nugget of wisdom had apparently been assembled by taking the percentages of various "minorities" and adding them all together.
The groups included:
51% Women
*cough* minority?
and then:
12% Single Mothers
[SubEd Are you sure we can simply add that number to the Women?] [Ed: yeah, no problem]
Re:Daily Mail is moronic (Score:4, Funny)
Even more amusing is the fact that single mothers are persecuted *by* the Daily Mail mostly.
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When two of those groups are women and single mothers, adding them together doesn't make that much sense.
I think it would be funny if all the other minority groups they included counted the whole population (men and women) as well.
And that was ALL there was (Score:2)
The Manchester area (where these programmes were recorded) is renowned for being rainy and January is one of the poorest for clear weather. It would hard to find a less suitable time and place to do a live programme about stargazing (the title of the show was Stargazing Live). There was, out of three solid hours of TV - no ad breaks on the BBC - about 10 minutes of live stargazing and that was all in the first episode. If you wa
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Why backlash? I think you summed it up pretty accurately - I was expecting Ross to be shown *how* to use his telescope to see Jupiter. It's all very well doing it for him, but what did he learn (unless they showed him off camera)? There were no tips for how to actually pick things out with a telescope - it's harder than it looks and is like looking for faces in a room while staring down a long cardboard tube with one eye.
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The first from people who saw the programmes and were inspired to go out, get a telescope and try it for themselves. They were given no information about haw difficult it can be. Nothing about what sort of telescopes to get, how to fous, find objects, the merits of different eyepieces or what level of expectations they should have. The same goes for the tacit implications in the piece about photography. By framing that piece with high quality images from the masters of the art -
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Indeed, and they are filming it at Jodrell Bank... which is noted for it's RADIO astronomy. Because as you note, the region is notorious for being overcast and wet.
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"Live astronomy in the cloudiest part of england at the cloudiest time of year?"
yes, and something STILL happened. Why are people missing that point? On a cloudy day in england and astronomical event was still see. I find that really cool.
Missing the Meteor shower (Score:2)
Dr. Who? (Score:2)
.
In Soviet Russia (Score:3)
Meteor misses you.
Unless of course you're in Siberia and it's 1908.