The Sky at Night

[Nigel Heath]

It must be an age thing but a lot of my heroes are no more: A C Clarke, Iain M Banks, Carl Sagan, Richard Feynman, Isaac Asimov, I could go on.

How could I forget Douglas Adams and John Peel.

[GordonD]

John Peel bought me a pint once. It happened when he was in Edinburgh - he was a great football fan and came along to watch my team, Meadowbank Thistle, in the Second Division. He refused to play the celebrity card and get in for nothing - he paid at the gate like the rest of us and sat with us during the match. Then afterwards he came back to the pub and got his round in like everybody else. A thoroughly nice man.

I met Patrick Moore too - at a book signing in Edinburgh. I was the only one present when he arrived but I was too in awe of him to have a proper chat, though there would have been plenty of time!

[Nigel Heath]

John Peel was a true gent and a very modest man. Now I have double jealousy.

[Eric Mc]

I bumped into Patrick Moore at Dublin AIrport once. He was buying an ice cream in the American Ice Cream parlour thet used to be sited in the main terminal back in the 1970s.

I also went to a talk he gave at Trinity College Dublin around 1983 or so. I even managed to ask him a question from the floor - on the origin of lunar craters - a subject on which he held quite controversial views.

[Nigel Heath]

Didn't he think a lot of them were volcanic? A theory now largely discredited.

[Eric Mc]

Up until the early 1960s, astronomers were split about 50/50 as to whether lunar craters were of volcanic or impact origin. British astronomers tended to be on the side of the "volcanic" theory.

There were a number of reasons why vulcansim seemed to be a logical explanation -

it was obvious that the moon had had a long period of very active vulcanism - the great lava plains (the "Mare") were signs of that

it had been shown through experiment and mathematic prediction that an erupting volcano in 1/6 gravity would throw material out in a rough circular pattern - which would explain the crater rims

most craters had a central peak - which was thought to be the actual volcano

Impact became more popular as the 1960s progressed, mainly because during this period, qualified geologists began, for the first time, to study the lunar landscape - essentially as part of the unmanned and manned lunar missions that were taking place.

They had a better understanding of vulcanism and were much more in favour of impacts as being the correct explanation. Further exploration of the solar system revealed that craters were common on other worlds as well - even worlds where earth like vulcanism would be virtually impossible - such as the icy moons of Jupiter and Saturn.

It was also realised that the fundamental way in which solar systems formed resulted in lots of objects, colliding and falling together under gravity, which would naturally result in evidence of the latter stages of this coalescing being in the form of extensive cratering.

By the 1980s, the debate had more or less settled in favour of impact cratering - but Patrick Moore held on to his old ideas for a long time after. However, to give him is due, he eventually relented and accepted that cratering was essentially caused by impacts and that volcanic craters would be very much in the minority.

About ten years ago, he published a completely updated edition of his book "Patrick Moore On the Moon" and explained why he had changed his mind.

[Jabberwocky]

It must be an age thing but a lot of my heroes are no more: A C Clarke, Iain M Banks, Carl Sagan, Richard Feynman, Isaac Asimov, I could go on.

How could I forget Douglas Adams and John Peel.

I'm with you on that one Nigel. I've lost seven people known to me personally in the past five years, including both parents, but the names on your list can have just as shattering an effect.

I met Iain Banks at a book festival in Warwick, and as well as the recently-published copy of Transition I'd bought, he also graciously signed my battered copy of The Crow Road for me, during a chat about 'comfort books' that we keep going back to and re-reading. Unfortunately he had a train to catch and the queue behind me was getting restless so the conversation was cut short, but I had the impression we could have carried on for some time. I could understand his excitement at being asked to drive through beautiful areas of Scotland and be paid to do so, while researching Raw Spirit, as I had similar feelings when I worked for Cellnet in the late '80s. Unfortunately that conversation was never to take place, although I had hoped to meet him again, an intelligent man with a great sense of humour.

I suppose it ends up a bit like Douglas Adams' Total Perspective Vortex, just you and the rest of the universe.

I would have loved to have met Patrick Moore, Carl Sagan, Neil Armstrong, and many others who indirectly helped to show me how to look up at the lights in the sky and truly appreciate their beauty and wonder, and thank them personally, but I am hugely grateful to them all nonetheless.

And at the risk of being accused of impersonating Brian Cox, I'm going to gaze wistfully at the sky for a bit.

[Nigel Heath]

I just went and had a look at the darkening evening sky. There was nothing to see, of course this is Scotland with near perpetual cloud cover.

[GordonD]

Just received this e-mail from the lady behind the petition:

As most of you will now be aware, the BBC have recently announced that The Sky at Night will continue from February next year, after a break in January. The BBC's own news website states that this is following this petition (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-24740857) so I just wanted to say an extremely grateful 'Thank You', on behalf of the entire 'Save Sky at Night Team' to each and every one of you who took the time to sign this petition and say how delighted we are that the programme has been saved.
We don't yet know what the format will be, or even who will be presenting it, but we feel that we cannot really do anything useful regarding that until the programme has aired a few times and we can gauge whether or not the scientific content has been retained to at least the same standard. As such we have decided to close this petition and 'watch and wait'.
Once again thank you very much for your support and well done to all of us!
Karen and the Save S@N Team.

:yahoo:

[Black Knight]

echo

[Fea]

Brilliant !

[Eric Mc]

I reckon the petition had no significant impact at all. BBC have often aired a view on a certain programme's future and then confirmed it was being retained - although sometimes with a changed format or presenters.

My opinion on this was that the BBC had no intention whatsoever in scrapping the programme. But they definitely were reconsidering its place in the schedules.