The Winter Sky
Dec. 5th, 2007 10:05 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ewein2412Oh my god it’s so DARK!!!!
The street lights flicked on at exactly 3.30 p.m. yesterday afternoon as Mark and I walked home from school. They’re not on now at 9.40 a.m., but it is twilight inside the house with the lights out. And it’s only going to get darker for the next two weeks.
However, this means that the Mills Observatory in Dundee is in full swing. I just cannot gush enough over what a supremely cool place this is. For a start, it is FREE. It is entirely operated by the Dundee City Council, and has been ever since it first opened its papier mache dome to the public in 1935 (though you do pay a tiny fee to see the planetarium show, presumably to subsidize the guy who gives the lecture four times a night). And then, the observatory is ONLY OPEN AT NIGHT IN WINTER. Just about every other tourist attraction in the UK shuts down and hibernates between October and April, so this is very unusual, although it makes sense if you consider that the opposite of dark is light…. in other words, at midsummer it doesn’t get dark enough to look through the telescope, and even in August you’d have to wait till after 10.00 p.m.
The first time we visited the observatory, last March, was a huge success, but since September we have made three foiled attempts to visit: on our first try, the place was closed; then the man who operates the telescope was sick; and finally we got lost and arrived so late we missed the planetarium show. Fourth try lucky. The planetarium is teeny tiny. (I suppose I should say it is "wee.") It is a tent, like a silk parachute on a frame, set up in a room that I would guess is smaller than our living room (I was instantly put in mind of the Great Globe Room in The Lion Hunter). There are about a dozen office chairs set up all around the edge of the dome. We had a lecture on space Clouds (baby stars, nebulae) afterward, but the show itself was just a straightforward view of the sky at the moment and all the interesting things to look for--namely Comet Holmes in Perseus, and Algol the demon star, then Mars and the Geminids in December. The lecturer told us to come back in December and maybe we can see the surface of Mars!
He was lovely--so enthusiastic, pointing out his favorite constellations--he said it never ceases to amaze him to think we are all made of of material that was once a star. “You are all created from the stuff of stars.” He kept talking about these huge time periods, stellar time, as though it happened in an eyeblink. “These are young stars, only ten million years old, we’re quite lucky to see them really”--as though we were around more than ten million years ago or will be ten million years from now! He made me want to be an astronomer.
The first time we visited the observatory, last March, was a huge success, but since September we have made three foiled attempts to visit: on our first try, the place was closed; then the man who operates the telescope was sick; and finally we got lost and arrived so late we missed the planetarium show. Fourth try lucky. The planetarium is teeny tiny. (I suppose I should say it is "wee.") It is a tent, like a silk parachute on a frame, set up in a room that I would guess is smaller than our living room (I was instantly put in mind of the Great Globe Room in The Lion Hunter). There are about a dozen office chairs set up all around the edge of the dome. We had a lecture on space Clouds (baby stars, nebulae) afterward, but the show itself was just a straightforward view of the sky at the moment and all the interesting things to look for--namely Comet Holmes in Perseus, and Algol the demon star, then Mars and the Geminids in December. The lecturer told us to come back in December and maybe we can see the surface of Mars!
He was lovely--so enthusiastic, pointing out his favorite constellations--he said it never ceases to amaze him to think we are all made of of material that was once a star. “You are all created from the stuff of stars.” He kept talking about these huge time periods, stellar time, as though it happened in an eyeblink. “These are young stars, only ten million years old, we’re quite lucky to see them really”--as though we were around more than ten million years ago or will be ten million years from now! He made me want to be an astronomer.
He made Mark want to be an astronomer, too. Mark (who is 7) was particularly impressed with the planetarium equipment and has asked for a star globe for Christmas. No, really, he said in his funny self-conscious shy way: “There’s something I want… It’s a star globe.” He even suggested where you can buy them. Then he came home and put together a P0werpoint presentation entitled "SPACE" which I dearly wish I could share only I can't be bothered to spend two hours figuring out how to do it.
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Date: 2007-12-07 10:49 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-12-10 08:58 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-12-10 11:00 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-12-10 11:09 pm (UTC)We saw the Andromeda Nebula again, too.
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Date: 2007-12-11 10:47 am (UTC)Re the Google Earth/Sky, when you've got the latest version, if you click on 'Help', then 'Tutorials', then choose the one about Sky, it takes you to a little video on YouTube, here - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eMhGpzyFdhE. Very interesting.
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Date: 2007-12-11 12:10 pm (UTC)The most spectacular view of the full moon that I've ever seen was thru one of the tourist telescopes at the top of the Camera Obscura in Edinburgh! It was right after sunset so still a bit light, and the moon was just rising--this was the first and only time that I could see the moon's irregular edge, its mountains in silhoutte. It was a very unexpected pleasure as the ticket taker had only charged us half the entry fee because it was getting dark and she didn't think we'd get much of a view--of the city, of course--she wasn't expecting us to look at the moon!
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Date: 2007-12-12 10:25 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-12-11 10:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-12-12 10:32 am (UTC)