The Supermassive Podcast - 24: Eclipses & Expeditions

Episode Date: December 24, 2021

Join Dr Becky Smethurst and Dr Robert Massey as they explore eclipses; what are they and how have they been studied throughout history? Plus Izzie Clarke visits the Royal Astronomical Society Library to discover what the society has in the archives, and astronaut Nicole Stott and her husband, Fellow of the RAS, Chris Stott send us their eclipse audio diary from Antarctica. The RAS Bicentenary Timeline can be found here: https://ras.ac.uk/timeline The Supermassive Podcast is a Boffin Media production by Izzie Clarke and Richard Hollingham. 

It looks like the moon sort of took a little chomp, a little bite out of the sun, doesn't it? One does not simply walk into Antarctica. You have to prepare. It's been such a long time since we've been in the Royal Astronomical Society. Is there a photo of a double eclipse? Hello and welcome to the Supermassive podcast from the Royal Astronomical Society with me, astrophysicist Dr. Becky Smethurst. But this month, without my wonderful co-host Izzy Clark, because she's not feeling very well, but we still will be hearing from her later in the episode, don't worry. This month, it's all about eclipses. What are they and how have they been studied throughout history?

Izzy has been to visit the Royal Astronomical Society library to discover what the society has in their archives. Plus, we have an eclipse audio diary from astronaut Nicole Stott and her husband, Chris Stott, who've just returned from Antarctica. I mean, I don't know about you, I'm a little bit jealous. And obviously with us right now, we, as always, we have the marvelous Dr. Robert Massey, the Deputy Director of the Royal Astronomical Society. Now, Robert, you've literally written the book on the moon. So you are the perfect person to help everyone get to grips with eclipses. So should we just kick things off?

What actually happens when we have a total solar eclipse? Well, a total solar eclipse is an incredibly special event. Every single month, the moon moves roughly between the earth and the sun, but you have to remember that the universe is in three dimensions and it's only when the earth, moon and sun line up in those three dimensions that you get an eclipse. So the moon blocks out the light of the sun. And because they're almost exactly the same size, they're incredibly rare events. So you get that absolute precision. I've been lucky enough to see three in my life,

a long time ago now. Actually, the last one was back in 2006. And I've been clouded out for a couple of them as well. And basically, precise alignment, the moon absolutely perfectly blocking out the light of the sun because it's directly between the earth and the sun nice and what about other types of eclipses right we often hear about these uh quite often

there was the partial eclipse earlier this year in the uk there's also annular eclipses as well do you want to explain those i can yeah so so with the shadow of the moon so if you imagine that lineup in a total eclipse the shadow of the moon tends to be pretty small how big it is when it hits the earth depends on how far away it is. And at most a couple hundred kilometers across or so. So if you're not in that region, if you're outside of it, then you don't see the earth, moon and sun exactly lined up. What you see instead is that some of the sun is covered.

And also sometimes the shadow of the moon misses the earth altogether. And then everywhere that sees an eclipse sees it as a partial one. They're a lot more common because you can see them over a much larger area of the earth and for example there's one next year in october in the uh in the uk you know it's a chance for us to see it then nice it looks like the the moon sort of took a little chomp a little bite exactly it looks like a bite out of it yeah and the different i mean the difference is absolutely palpable though because when you have a total solar eclipse, the sky really does get dark. You see the outer atmosphere of the sun, a fantastic sight.

In a partial eclipse, you can't safely look at it. You have to project it or use eclipse glasses or something like that to view it. So it's a really very, very different event. And there is a really good reason that people travel to see total eclipses because they are simply so spectacular. And then there's also another type, which is an annular eclipse. And the next one of those is in 2023. They are simply so spectacular. And then there's also another type, which is an annular eclipse. And the next one of those is in 2023. That's even a weirder type called an annular total,

but over Indonesia and the very western tip of Australia. But in an annular eclipse, the moon is too far away to completely cover the sun. Because you have to remember that the moon is not going around the earth in a perfect circle. Almost nothing in astronomy is a perfect circle. And so for that reason, sometimes it's further away and it doesn't quite cover the sun. And so you get a bright ring left around the silhouette of the moon. And that's what will be happening in 2023. And that's what we call an annular eclipse because annulus means ring.

Yeah, it's annular rather than annual. I always have to really enunciate that difference. So that solar eclipse is covered. What happens when we have a lunar eclipse? Maybe the name gives it away slightly. Gives it away, exactly. That's an eclipse of the moon. And that's when the moon moves into the shadow of the Earth.

Now, they're pretty much as common as solar eclipses. They're slightly rarer, actually. But the difference is that when the moon moves into the Earth's shadow, because the Earth's shadow, well, A, the Earth's shadow is big. So it's relatively common that the moon moves into it. The same thing has to happen. You have to have the Earth, moon and sun precisely aligned in three dimensions or lined up well enough in three dimensions. But wherever you can see the moon above the horizon, it'll always be a full moon as well because it'll be opposite the sun. And wherever that happens, you can see the lunar

eclipse. So they tend to be visible over a much wider area of the Earth. And there is one visible from the UK just on the 16th of May 2022, which will be visible as the moon sets. So essentially just as the sun rises. That'll be the best because it'll look really big as well. It'll look great, exactly. And if it's low on the horizon with the moon illusion and everything else, looking really stonkingly big in the sky and a beautiful, and hopefully also a beautiful red colour,

because the other thing that happens is that you get some of the sunlight passes through the earth's atmosphere and when you look at a low sun you remember that it appears a red color because the blue light is scattered away and that red light comes through the earth's atmosphere and it basically hits the moon so it doesn't usually go completely dark what you get is that residual light on it gives it a beautiful coppery or brick red color. And they are stunningly beautiful. They're a really special thing to see. So they might be more common, but I still always really, really enjoy seeing them. I mean, yeah, definitely. I mean, with moons turning red and suns having chomps out of them or disappearing from the sky entirely, it's no surprise that throughout history, people were fascinated with eclipses,

right? And in the relationship between the Earth, Moon, and Sun. I mean, it's really quite amazing. Our Moon is just at that perfect size to block out the Sun's light as well, isn't it? It's an extraordinary coincidence. And I think without that coincidence, we'd probably know a lot less about the Sun because the fact that we're able to see the outer atmosphere through this coincidental phenomenon is really quite something. There's no inherent reason for that.

It's just a piece of cosmic luck, if you like. And it's therefore, I think, I suppose it's not really surprising at all that anything affecting the sun particularly was going to have a massive significance in history and prehistory. It's very hard to believe that anybody in history who looked up at that, particularly if they weren't expecting it, because after all, you couldn't predict them

for most of human history, would have been astonished by what was happening. You know, what on earth is happening? There's this bigger and bigger bite coming out of the sun. And in totality, when the sun disappears completely, when you just see that outer atmosphere, the people, I don't know, shock, fear. Yeah, and I can imagine also being around animals and everything as well,

like life as it reacts to this, right? That's supposedly one of the biggest things about seeing an eclipse. Yeah, I think there are absolute instances of mammals, for example, higher mammals, for example, reacting to these things. I remember I saw an eclipse in southern Africa. Actually, it was in Zimbabwe in 2001. And the rangers in the game park we were in described how the cuda, the deer, was sitting there somewhat dazed. And a lion took advantage of that to kill them. It was that kind of thing. So you could see, I guess the lion was not fazed by what was going on with the eclipse,

whereas the deer were. And I'm pretty sure I'm pretty sure I guess that insects and so on don't react particularly to it. It just gets dark after all for a couple of minutes or so. But higher mammals certainly do. And it's not really surprising that we would be absolutely captivated by that kind of view in the sky. So you just said there, Robert, that people couldn't really predict these eclipses, which is why they were so scary.

At what point were we able to predict eclipses so that is why they were so scary. At what point were we able to predict eclipses so that our fear was taken out a little bit? It's a really difficult thing to do because you have to have a really precise model of where the moon is in its orbit around the earth. So you need, really, you need a heliocentric universe. You need to have a decent theory of gravitation and so on that allows us, for example, to predict the positions of the planets in the solar system. So Chinese astronomers tried from a couple of thousand years ago using an Earth-centered geocentric model. Some of the ancient Greek astronomers did, and supposedly Thales predicted that there would be an eclipse during a battle in 585 BCE. But that's debated as to whether that was actually the case. And Babylonian astronomers

recorded them and kind of tried to, well, they understood there was a cycle when eclipses happened, but actually predicting where they would be visible is a lot tougher. And even today, it's hard to do that a long way into the future because we have some difficulty in knowing exactly how the rotation of the earth will change over time. And if you get a cumulative error, it could make a difference of hundreds of kilometers. So if you were to go, say, to 100,000 years in the future, we would really struggle to know exactly where an eclipse would be. But scientists like Edmund Halley, the Astronomer Royal, back in 1715, he made a pretty good prediction of an eclipse track.

It was still a few kilometers out and use that data to refine it. And since then, with better models for the positions of the Earth, Moon, and Sun, it's become easier. And we now can predict them quite a long way into the future, but not forever. It's a modeling science. It's not something where you... I think in astronomy, people tend to think, oh, everything goes around in circles. Everything goes around like clockwork. Of course, it's not really like that. You have to run models to simulate things into the future. Lunar eclipses are a bit easier just because they're seen over a big area and the shadow is big. Knowing an eclipse has happened is somewhat easier. It's also just a generally slower phenomenon. The shadow is big,

it can take an hour and more to go through it. We really care about the science here as well. What can eclipses actually teach us? What can they tell us? Well, before the space age, they were incredibly important because if you wanted to understand the outer atmosphere of the sun, or even the inner bit of the outer atmosphere of the sun, beyond the kind of bright photosphere that you see, that you think of as the solar surface, an eclipse was one of the rare opportunities to do that because during a total eclipse, the moon lines up nicely. You see all these prominences, these eruptions on the surface. You see the structure of the beautiful corona, the huge outer atmosphere stretching into space.

And that was really the only time you could do it. Now, even today, it's a convenient thing. You might have sophisticated space probes going in to study these regions, but actually it's still pretty helpful. You get that opportunity during that couple of minutes, if you're lucky, of totality where you can look at the transition region between the solar surface and the lowest bit of the corona. So it's not just a thing of beauty.

There are still serious science that can be done with it to this day. Great. All right. Well, cheers, Robert. We'll catch up with you later in the show, as always. We'll be talking later about the history of expeditions to view eclipses, even in the most far-flung corners of the planet. But even today, there are some people who will travel to the ends of the Earth to view them the bucket listers i guess fellow of the royal astronomical society chris stott has just returned from a voyage to antarctica accompanying his wife astronaut nicole stott in the hope of seeing this year's solar eclipse and

he's recorded the experience for us hi i'm retired'm retired NASA astronaut and artist Nicole Stott. And I'm Chris Stott, fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society, and we are headed down to Antarctica to see the solar eclipse. One does not simply walk into Antarctica. You have to prepare. And our packing list was really very thorough thanks to the people on the MV legend so starting from the bottom in a sock out a sock special mud boots long johns special thermal underwear special

trousers then wind-breaking thermal trousers then t-shirt shirt sweater lots of layers special polar jacket, and then all that's special. Yeah, I'm Rolf, the captain for this expedition. We operate a relatively small icebreaker, which was converted into a passenger class yacht. 77 meters so we're pretty susceptible to rough weather. We had plans to spend the eclipse in the South Orkney Islands, specifically Coronation Island. However, on review of some of the low pressure systems currently sitting in the Southern Ocean. We found sea conditions were not conducive to this size vessel. We made the decision to sit in the lee of the Antarctic Peninsula instead,

specifically in the lee of Brabant Island, where we will still experience and enjoy 95% totality provided cloud cover allows, but we have the luxury of no wind and no swell. Thank you. Hey I'm Dan, I'm the navigator of MOTOYacht Legend. The ship's currently in Anvord Bay, just up from Nikko Harbour in Antarctica, and unfortunately the entirety of the Antarctic yn Anford Bay, o'r harbwr Nico yn Antarctica. Ac yn anffodus, mae'r holl ffyniad o'r peninsul Antarctica a'r holl beth o'r ddwylau weddol yn cael ei gynnal gyda llawrwch 99% ac yn ymlaen ymlaen dros y rhan fwyaf o'r Strait Girlash.

Mae gennym sŵn sŵn sylfaenol llawr. Mae'r gwylfa nawr yn llwyr na mil o'r llawr ac yn sŵn sylfaenol. Yn anffodus, mae gweld y sŵn a'r hynod o gyfathrebu yn anffodus than one mile and thick ice and thick snow unfortunately actually seeing the sun and the moon interaction that's going to be very very hard on this cloud cover and on that bombshell we'll leave chris and nicole stop for the moment and hear again from them later in the podcast how that all turned out now throughout history we've been obsessed with looking up and working out our place in the universe the royal astronomical society's archive is chock full of papers predicting eclipses or documenting expeditions from centuries ago in search of eclipses last week izzy had the pleasure

of meeting friend of the podcast and librarian sean prosser to see what she had found in the archive. And safe to say, Izzy was very excited to be back at the Society in person. Well, this is very exciting. It's been such a long time since we've been in the Royal Astronomical Society. I think my voice has just gone very high out of excitement. How are you, Sian? I'm also very excited to be in the library and to have somebody else in the library. I guess it has been quite a while, hasn't it? Today is all about eclipses and what the Royal Astronomical Society has in the archive.

And I want to talk about how they've been documented over the years. So if we start quite a while back, let's say ancient times, are there any ideas of what people thought an eclipse might be? Is there any form of documentation? Documentation is a problem. If you're looking at archaeo-astronomical evidence, it's hard to know exactly what people thought. There are many myths from many cultures to explain this incredibly arresting natural phenomenon. But from the time of Aristotle and other natural philosophers in ancient Greece and other cultures, they were able to work out from repeated observations of things like the lunar eclipses that the shadow of the Earth

was always curved. So they worked out, this is one of the pieces of evidence they used to work that out, that it was spherical, that it was a natural phenomenon that was predictable and that had a rational explanation. And thanks to astronomers making these observations, they were able to begin to predict eclipses. And so let's fast forward a little bit because obviously you've come here with some goodies. We've got a lot of stuff in front of us. So let's start off with this tiny, I'd say an A5 brown sort of ready book. What's this about it looks very small and unprepossessing but this is one of the earliest printed scientific books the royal astronomical society has an early printed

book collection of of thousands of books and this is one that was written by an astronomer called Johannes Regiomontanus and printed by a really innovative printer who is working in the late 15th century called Erhard Rattdolt. Gosh, 15th century. Wow. OK, so this is a very old book. Yeah, this book was printed in 1499. It's called The Calendarium. And Regiomontanus was humanistically trained.

He was really good at languages and interpreting ancient Greek and Latin texts to draw out the best of the science therein. But also he was a great scientist and mathematician. He was drawing up much more accurate observations from his contemporary work and creating more up-to-date and accurate astronomical tables that astronomers really relied upon for being able to predict astronomical phenomena. Right. So we've got these very delicate pages full of lots of different sort of charts and just

lots of notes being taken. Yes. For the Middle Ages, this is a small book, but it's packed with big data. But what I'm going to show you, which is of interest to you, is this page of diagrams of lunar eclipses and solar eclipses. There are about 16 altogether. Over several pages, they are dated from 1497. There are projections of eclipses all the way up to 1530. It's a series of discs in black and red. And Ratdolp, he was one of the first printers

to use two colours of ink in his printing. I mean, it's amazing. So we've got here what the eclipses would have looked like from where he's taking notes. So imagine you've either got a black circle or a red circle. And if you're looking at the black circle, it's slowly got a bit of red creeping in at the edges. Or if you've got a red circle, you you're looking at the black circle it's you know slowly got a bit of red creeping in at the edges or if you've got a red circle you've got the moon sort of creeping in to

make it that that full eclipse it's it's really stunning and it's interesting that you say that this is print because when you look at these pictures the print work is almost the sort of same colouring and density of if you've got a colouring pencil and sort of scribbled that in. So gosh, so 1499, I'm not going to touch this, I'm leaving this to Sean to handle because I'm too scared. And so this is predicting the eclipses, both solar and lunar, sort of up until, what does that say, 1530. Wow. Obviously, these are observations that have been taken by eye. And so, again, if we jump forward in time, I feel like quite a lot happened in the 1800s

in terms of observing our world, you know, eclipses, both solar and lunar. So, Sian, you've got even more papers on the table in front of us. Yes. What have we got here? Let's move on to the papers of one of the founding members of the Royal Astronomical Society. We were founded in 1820,

and one of the founders was someone called Francis Bailey, who was a stockbroker who retired at the age of 50 to dedicate himself to his true love, which was astronomy. And we are in the library right now, and there's a massive portrait of him staring down at us right now. So he's watching us looking at his notes, which are, again, stunning to look at. So we've got this sort of, it's that typical tea-stained paper,

as you see it, with some four large black circles in. And I'm assuming these are the various solar eclipses. these are the various solar eclipses. Yep, so this is Francis Bailey's observation of the annular eclipse of the sun, May 15th, 1836. And there are four black disks and on each of the disks he has shown an irregularity on the left-hand side of the disk, almost bead-like appearances or black rays emanating out from the edge of the disk. And remember, this isn't a total eclipse. This is an annular eclipse.

So the moon does not completely obscure the sun, and there is still quite a clear and pronounced ring around the side. So what's interesting about this observation is Francis Bailey was based in London, but he deliberately travelled to Jedburgh in Scotland to make the best observation he could. And that's probably one of the earliest documented instances of somebody travelling, maybe having a bit of a mini eclipse expedition to observe this phenomenon. And secondly, the way that he's shown the uneven dots of light at the side of the eclipse,

that's a phenomenon now known as Bailey's beads. So he noticed that due to the rays of the sun during the eclipse shining through the valleys and past the mountains, visible on the very edge of the lunar limb, that was creating an effect known as Bailey's beads. It's almost looking similar to a diamond ring at some stages of the eclipse. And people do talk about the diamond ring effect now. So that's 1836 covered. What else have you got in store for us here? So just three years after this eclipse the technique of photography was invented. It was not immediately adopted in astronomy but in 1860 one of our fellows warren de la rue used his new innovation in photographic

techniques to take a really good photograph of a solar total solar eclipse that was observed from river beyoza in spain and we have his eclipse expedition photo album which i'll show you now oh my gosh okay so um we've got a very old book in front of us that just says album it really looks like your standard holiday photo album. Oh wow okay so Sian's just turned it to an amazing image of what is a total solar eclipse and all that we're left with seeing are those prominences around the edges. It's quite stunning. So, you know, how important was this technique in terms of, and also just being able to photograph an eclipse? It was an important development because Warren De La Rue was a trained chemist who ran a very successful

printing business, but he was also very interested in astronomy. So he used his knowledge of astronomy and chemistry to dabble quite seriously in photographic techniques. He was a very good observer. We've got some letters and articles that he wrote to the Royal Astronomical Society, accompanied by his drawings that have been made into engravings, where he's talking about his frustration at not being able to capture enough detail of comets, etc. But that's what drew him to using astrophotography as a technique to take really objective as possible photographs of phenomena like, you know, just the moon on a regular night or the moon and the sun completely in conjunction with each other in the form of an

eclipse. That was Sian Prosser talking to Izzy there. We'll make sure to share some of the images of those artefacts on social media. This is the Supermassive Podcast from the Royal Astronomical Society with me, astrophysicist Dr. Becky Spethurst. This month, it's all eclipses and expeditions, so let's get to everybody's questions that you sent in. First of all, Robert, can I bring you back in here? Because Timo asks a great question. Is there a photo of a double eclipse, like a spacecraft having the sun being partially blocked by maybe two different planets? Has this ever happened? What a great question. It is. Yeah, this was quite fun to explore, Timo.

And I had to think about it for a while. And then I thought, well, actually, the difficulty is that the spacecraft would have to be absolutely in line with those two planets and the sun. And there's a vanishingly small chance of that and the other thing to remember is that if you had two planets the one the spacecraft was near might well block out the sun but the the further one would just be a dot moving in front of it as we see what we which is what we describe as transit so venus and mercury do that as we see them from the earth every so often there has been i think a spacecraft observed pretty sure there have been

spacecraft on mars seeing eclipses of the moons they don't cover the sun in quite the same way i'm not sure if anything's ever any spacecraft's ever observed a transit uh sitting on say the surface of another world but they they could do that's not that's not that unlikely two at once though would be going some however if you're patient there are a few cases that where this might something like this will happen from earth so if you're prepared to there are a few cases where something like this will happen from Earth. So if you're prepared to wait till the year 6757, Mercury will pass in front of the sun during a partial solar eclipse. In the year 15232, Venus will do the same during a total solar eclipse. And in the year 69163, Mercury-Venus will transit the sun at the same time so i'd say

put those dates in your calendars now i mean they're definitely in there i'll tell you that it's like siri uh to calendar yeah definitely that's that's crazy to think about so if you have venus transiting is it like it goes across first and then the moon sort of seems to be following it taking that bite good question as to which order they're happening you know i suppose the thing is that with a with a solar eclipse the motion of the moon will be a lot faster they that you know even even a partial solar eclipse and beginning to end is not an hour and a half or so a couple of hours a transit of uh venus lasts about six hours so my guess is presumably that the transit's happening

and then the moon moves in front of it. It'll look so much like a face though, won't it? The sun with sort of like the trunk taken out of it and the dot. Yeah, that'll be amazing. It's a shame there's not a sort of mouth smiley shaped object in the solar system to complete it. And another question that came in was from Glenn Stevens,

which I really liked um he asked how many solar and lunar eclipses does earth experience every year and if they are not the same number then why are they different so i'll take this one robert um because i quite like this question it's not the same number every year is it so it's between two to five solar eclipses per year so they all come in pairs with lunar eclipses as well, usually. So I guess that's four to 10 if you're thinking about eclipses in total. And it's all, again,

because of this moon, earth, sun setup. So the moon is tilted at that five degree plane to the sort of earth and sun plane. So we don't get them every new moon. And it's all about lining that up. So you have this very intricate dance. When they line up, we call it a lunar node, which I didn't know. Thanks, Glenn, for making me look up that little piece of knowledge. And they happen just less than every six months and last a little bit

longer than a typical moon orbit, like the full 28 days of new moon to new moon, for example. So it's about 34 and a half days. And we call those 34 and a half days eclipse season, which I quite like. It's sort of like, you know, 1815 season, you know, in London or whatever, eclipse season, everyone get dressed up. So this is why most years you only get two, right? Because they're roughly six months apart. So you can fit two eclipse seasons in per year and now usually you get sort of one solar and one lunar per season but if the moon phase lines up right you can get two solar eclipses per eclipse season because you can have a new moon right at the beginning of a season and 30 odd days later you get a new moon at the end of the season as

well that lasts 34 and a half days and then because the eclipse seasons are just less than six months apart you can actually fit three seasons in per year like if you have one early jan and then in june and then at the end of december as well so it's very very rare but you can actually get five solar eclipses per year if you're lucky fitting in two in an eclipse season then one in terms of the timings that you can actually fit in and i've got another date for your diary uh robert as well so the last time that there was five solar eclipses in a year was 1935 and the next will be 2206 that's another it's in my diary now what is google calendar for if not that yeah

i mean that i gave you a date that was at least a little bit closer in the future. If you want to send in questions for a future episode, then you can email them to podcast at ris.ac.uk or tweet at Royal Astro Sock. All right, we left you on that cliffhanger before, so now it's time for part two of Nicole and Chris Stott's expedition to Antarctica. Let's see what happened. Not to be deterred though, we set our alarm for 3.20, bundled up and went out on deck of legend in hopes of catching a glimpse of the total solar eclipse. 99% means at least

1% chance we might be lucky. Well, the sky was beautiful. It was very grey. It was snowing. It then became slightly darker and then lighter again. And that is how we experienced the eclipse. From Antarctica, beautiful Antarctica. And we are so thankful to Dr. Sean Prosser at Burlington House in London, who laid out this beautiful spread of the journal from the 1896 eclipse journey to Norway, where we saw really beautiful pictures of the people and these super long telescopes that they deployed there. And only one shot of a partial eclipse in that whole journal. It seems that journeys to the Arctic and Antarctic to see eclipses, cloud cover might be the norm. We're very thankful, though, to the folks with the DISCOVER spacecraft, though to the folks with the discover spacecraft the deep space climate observatory with nasa that took a stunning from space image of the total solar eclipse and also to our friends on the international space station who caught the shadow of the eclipse on that southern hemisphere of Earth, as well as to the people on continent in Antarctica at Union Glacier

who have some stunning photos of the total timeline of the total eclipse. So to those who might listen to this 400 years from now when the next solar eclipse happens down in Antarctica, we wish you the very best of luck. We hope you're living in a better world than we are. And we hope you have less cloud cover. And we hope that even if you're not witnessing a total solar eclipse, that you'll pay attention to the awe and wonder that surrounds you every day

and be equally as stunned by all of it. Nicole and Chris Stott there. Thank you so much to Chris, a fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society for recording their experiences in Antarctica for us. All right, Robert, for all of those who have been inspired to look up this month, what can we see in the night sky

in the next couple of weeks? Well, you know, it is cold, it is dark, but you know what? Hey, it's a great time to look at the night sky in the next couple of weeks? Well, you know, it is cold, it is dark, but you know what? Hey, it's a great time to look at the night sky as well if you can steel yourself for that British midwinter, wrap up well. So looking forward to January, we're watching as Venus ends its evening apparition. It's going to become a morning sky object. And before it does that, at the very start of the month

and at the end of December, it'll be very low in the sky but if you look at it with a pair of binoculars even you should see it as an exquisite thin crescent it's beautiful but quite hard to see for all that so please be very careful to only look after sunset because it's obviously quite dangerous to pick up a pair of binoculars if the sun's in the sky don't look anywhere near when the sun's there and it'll then move into the morning sky and by the end of january actually start to be quite easy to see. There's also one of the more promising meteor showers we've had recently called the Quadrantids. And that one is best viewed from the UK probably in the evening of the 3rd of January into the morning of the 4th of January,

immediately after the predictions for the peak. In theory, you could see anything up to 20, 30, 40, 50 meteors an hour, but it's always really hard to know. And the good thing about this one, if we get clear weather, which is always a given to see these things, obviously, is that there's no moon in the sky, so it'd be nice and dark. And if you're outside of the city or can get away from the city, you should enjoy a really good view. And the meteors are actually named after a constellation that no longer exists called Quadrans Muralis. So the direction they appear to come from in the sky is where that constellation was,

which is near Boötes, the herdsman, near the tail of the plow. So that kind of direction. But with meteors, they can appear anywhere in the sky. It's probably just a good idea to look towards the northeast. It's also obviously still a really great time to look at the winter constellations. You know, start with Orion, absolutely stunning there in the southern sky as you go towards late evening. And you can use it to find the other bright stars that I think are really, really absolutely spectacular in the winter sky. You can go down the three stars of the belt, you find Sirius, which is the brightest star in the whole sky, up to Aldebaran in Taurus, and then you've got Rigel in Betelgeuse and Capella in Auriga and Pollux in Gemini and Procyon in Canis Minor, and they make up this lovely arrangement called the Winter Circle or sometimes the Winter Hexagon of bright stars. Absolutely fabulous thing to see.

And I think the middle of winter when it's cold in January and February and you look up and you see this thing in a dark sky, it's really spectacular. It's basically the sky is as bright as it gets in the uk in terms of in terms of stars it's even spectacular when you've got a lot of light pollution as well though because they're the only things that show up so it makes them ironically you know much as i much as i uh rail against light pollution you're right in the sense that it makes it easier to spot the shape because you're not they're not swamped by other stars now by the way anybody listening shouldn't for one second take this as me thinking light volition is a good thing because i love

seeing all the other stars around them in the Milky Way and the rest of it which runs down through this too but you're quite right it makes it easier to spot the shape so even if you're in the middle of a city you should still be able to see these with with relative ease and once you've seen it you can't unsee it can you you can't unsee it no can you? You can't unsee it. You really can't. It's amazing. Orion is incredibly spectacular. I mean, you know, get an online guide or, you know, some free software like Stellarium or something like that, and you can easily see where these objects are that we're describing. It's very, very easy to find.

They'll be moving over from the southeast around towards the south as the evening progresses, pretty high up in the sky from the UK. And Sirius is unmistakable. It twinkles violently because it's relatively low in the UK sky. So it's coming through a lot of atmosphere. Violent twinkle, twinkle little star. It absolutely does. Yeah, twinkle, twinkle, very bright star in this case.

So it's a fabulous thing to see. And it sort of flashes different colours because you get all the different, you know, colours have been scattered through the Earth's atmosphere. It's a fabulous thing to see. But I would say then also, you know, you see it with your eye and absolutely encourage people to go and learn the constellations. It's a really nice way see uh but i would say then also you know you see it with your eye and absolutely encourage people to go and learn the constellations it's a really nice way to find your way around the sky and you can connect with the history and heritage but pick up a pair of binoculars if you've got one too or borrow some because if you look around this region there's so

much to see you can see things like the bigger nebula and orion and you can see star clusters like a you know messier's 35 36 37 38. Messier is a catalogue of these brighter objects in Gemini and Auriga and they're really easy to spot. And if you have a small telescope, even better, you'll see them not just as fuzzes, but actually they'll split into little jewel boxes of stars as well. Thanks, Robert. That was brilliant. Can you believe that not only is that it for this month, it's also it for the year? Where has the year gone that has flown by? Do you have any favourite moments from the past year? I think in terms of personal astronomy events, the one I enjoyed the most was probably watching the Perseid meteors in the summer, actually,

because we didn't go very far this year, but we did get to a nice dark campsite in dorset and that was just special you know you sit there and you think wow it's nice to be under a dark sky just relaxing little campfire going you know admittedly probably two or three beers later but it's absolutely fantastic and sounds absolutely perfect yeah it's it's what it's what astronomy should be about right you know just enjoying that that vista uh what i'm looking forward to clearly is the uh launch of the uh james webb telescope very soon which i know you'll want to talk about and then also i've got to refer people got to refer our listeners to the bicentenary timeline that we've just had live now as in our celebrations in 1922 when the ras was 100 years old this was

delayed by pandemic 2 as you can imagine. So it turns out that in 1922, our celebrations were delayed by the flu pandemic. And this year, our celebrations have been delayed by COVID. But never mind, you know, there's a weird resonance to all that. If you go to ras.ac.uk slash timeline, we've assembled some of the iconic images and iconic moments in the history of the RAS, you know, everything from the kind of key discoveries that our members have been associated with through to milestones in our own history, like when we were founded,

when we took the radical step of admitting women, which I'm pleased to say is now more than a century ago, and the kind of people that have been associated with us over the year and the amazing discoveries they've made. So do check that out. As I said, it's on the RAS website and on Instagram as well.

That sounds amazing, especially if you, I mean, I love science, but I'm also a science history nerd as well. So I'm definitely going to check that out. As I said, it's on the RAS website and on Instagram as well. That sounds amazing, especially if you, I mean, I love science, but I'm also a science history nerd as well. So I'm definitely going to check that out. And we hope, yes, that the James Webb Space Telescope will also find its place on that timeline in the next couple of weeks too. If it actually launches, it keeps getting pushed back to our intense frustration for all these last minute checks, which are obviously so necessary.

We need it to be checked thoroughly because, you know, we've got one shot at this. The last announcement was that it's no earlier than the 24th of December on Christmas Eve. I don't know if it'll actually go up then. I mean, because of Christmas, obviously, and people on holiday and everything. But I guess, you know, all we can do is just everybody keep their fingers

crossed for a nice, smooth launch and deployment and travel to L2 and all of that jazz. I know, it's, yeah, yes. I'm sort of hoping it's after Christmas, so I'm not tense on Christmas Eve. Yeah, I exactly like that too. Because the launch obviously is scary, but it's the fold out that's going to be the real nail-biting moments isn't it and they're going to be in the two weeks after launch so whether do i want that over christmas do i want that in january when i'm miserable in january speaking of january we will be back then in january 2022 with a full q a episode so get your questions into us they can be on astronomy space or anything super massive

izzy will be back and will also be joined by space boffins podcast host and commentator for the european space agency richard hollingham to answer any questions on astronauts or human spaceflight as well you can email podcast at ras.ac.uk or tweet them in to at royal astro sock until then everybody happy stargazing