Space and webspace

When I was little, I had a book. In fact, I still have this book – I can reach out now and pluck it from my bookcase. It’s lost its dust cover but is otherwise serviceable, despite my younger self reading it often. It is Astronomy for the Under Tens by Patrick Moore. It has my name in pencil in the front cover, thereby proving that it is in fact, mine. Oddly, the overriding memory I have of this book is the second to last page – Chapter 20: Test Your Skill.

Shall we?

  1. Which is bigger – the Sun or the Moon?
  2. What is the name of the comet that comes back every 76 years?
  3. Which moon of Jupiter is red, with volcanoes on it.
  4. What is the name astronomers give to the Seven Sisters?
  5. Name the brightest star in the sky.
  6. What colour is the planet Saturn?
  7. In what constellation are Betelgeuse and Rigel?
  8. Can you ever see the Southern Cross from Britain?
  9. From Britain, when will we see the next total eclipse of the sun?
  10. Is the surface of the planet Venus hotter or colder than that of the Earth?
  11. Which planet looks like a red star when you look at it without a telescope?
  12. What is an asteroid?
  13. What is the proper name of the constellation we often call the Plough?
  14. Which is the closest planet to the Sun?
  15. What shape is the Andromeda Galaxy?
  16. Name the German astronomer who first measured the distance of a star.
  17. Which is the planet with the bright rings?
  18. In the old story, who was the great singer who was rescued by a dolphin?
  19. Does the Moon have any light of it’s own?
  20. What is the best time of the year to look for meteors?

If you have a score of more than 15 out of 20, you are doing well.

My answers:

  1. Sun
  2. Halley’s Comet – I remember it’s last appearance, although I was too young and although I really wanted to see it I didn’t understand what I was looking at, so when I couldn’t instantly see it, I assumed I’d missed it. I didn’t realise until I saw Hale-Bopp when I was in my teens that comets actually hang around for days. I only have to wait until 28th July 2061 to see it again.
  3. Io
  4. Pleides (sp Pleiades)
  5. Sirius
  6. Brown? Yellow, pedant.
  7. Canis Major? Orion
  8. No?
  9. August 11th, 1999
  10. Hotter
  11. Mars, although it just looks white to me
  12. Oh heavens, this has something to do with shape. A non-spheroid planetary body that orbits the sun? A very small planet. Most asteroids move between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter.
  13. Ursa Major
  14. Mercury
  15. Spiral
  16. Copernicus? Friedrich Bessel
  17. Saturn
  18. I honestly have no idea. Arion
  19. No
  20. August!

16/20 if I allow spelling mistakes and hue disagreement.

Anyway the key points were question 9 – the date of the solar eclipse. I remember reading this book, which I must have been reading in the 1980s, and thinking what a long time off 1999 was. The date stuck in my mind because of the quiz. On the actual day, it was only a partial eclipse for us, as we were not in Cornwall. It was at 11am. I remember the sickle shaped shadows – all very odd. Got some lovely photos that Superdrug failed to develop initially as they thought they were blank. No, they were not blank, they were photos of the sun taken through two pairs of polarising sunglasses. I remember my teenage self patiently explaining to their staff that yes, of course it was mostly black, it was an eclipse.

The second is question 20 – that August is the best time for meteor showers also. In August the Earth goes through a cloud of dust and the collisions result in a large number of shooting stars. In 2004 we were in France when the shower hit, and saw a massive meteor against the backdrop of the local Alps. Today, slightly more high tech, Prof Brian Cox re-tweeted that it was the shower tonight, so I thus found myself sitting perched on Mum’s windowsill for half an hour watching Perseus. Turns out that despite a full moon, the back windows of our house face Perseus, which is where the August showers come from. And in the first five minutes I saw a shooting star – big yellow one. That’s the only one I saw, but the whole evening means I have no shame in saying…

I really like Twitter.

I’ve only been a member for about 2 weeks, but so far I’ve found out about early tickets for a show I like directly from the people in it, and I was reminded about the meteor shower from Prof Brian Cox and I saw a meteor. Now, I’m on FB and I’m fairly up to date with gadgets and apps and whatnot, but I’m not really that into social media etc., so me getting into Twitter was a little bit like trying to explain HTML to my boss. And I’m by no means an avid tweeter. Once a day is more than enough for me, and I follow only people who are also suitably laconic. For example, I love Stephen Fry, but he tweets too much for me, so I don’t follow him. But I like it – I kept up to date about the riots with it, some friends use it so I have random comments from them, plus I hear about tickets and meteor showers – it’s like Kai News 24.

Social media get a bad rap for being fads or for being too invasive etc. Well – it’s like dogs. It’s not the dog’s fault if it bites someone, it’s the owner. Rottweilers shouldn’t be banned, legislation against specific breeds is stupid – it’s not the breed, it’s the human attached to it. Likewise, it’s not the media that’s at fault, it’s the humans pressing the keys. These things are what you make of them. I chose to use them to enhance my life by providing me with info about people I know and people I like, and info on celestial events that, despite the best efforts of Patrick Moore and Astronomy for the Under Tens, I often forget.

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