ISSUE 3
March 2005
VOYAGE
£2.50
A Journey of Learning Through Space
THIS ISSUE:
THE NIGHT SKY
Spectacular Images
from the
Hubble Telescope
Gravity
Experiments
The Discovery
of Pluto
The Night Sky Part 2:
CHOOSING THE RIGHT EQUIPMENT
Great Puzzles and Competitions
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Voyage
CONTENTS
THE NIGHT SKY
4
Eye on the Sky
Since its launch in 1990, the Hubble Space Telescope has been our looking glass through time and space. This
photo feature shows some of its most spectacular images.
8 100 Years of Relativity
2005 sees the 100th anniversary of Einstein’s greatest theories. To celebrate his life and work,
STEVEN CUTTS tells us about him.
14
Huygens on Titan
After a seven-year hitch to Saturn with the Cassini spacecraft, the Huygens probe finally separated and
headed for a landing on the Titan moon. STEVEN CUTTS tells us how well it performed.
18
Mr Pilbeam’s Lab
The latest in our series of classroom experiments looks at gravity and gives you the chance to try out a whole
range of experiments to see how it works.
22
On the Cover: Death of a Star
PLUS
Orbital Mechanics
Life on Mars
32
36
Did You Know
Re-Entry: Finding Pluto
30
44
FEATURES and COMPETITIONS
Sci-Fi Focus - Smaller and Smaller
38
The 1960s Gerry Anderson puppet show has been turned into a great all-action movie. But it also has a link with the early
days of the American Space Program. BRIAN LONGSTAFF shows us the connection.
26
The Night Sky
Beginning Astronomy Part 2 - Last issue, we looked at how to get started in astronomy and what to look for in the sky.
This time, DAVE BUTTERY looks at the equipment you can buy to study the sights.
Who’s who in Space
24
Although Helen Sharman was the only astronaut to fly into space under the UK flag, Mike Foale has been the most
successful British-born space explorer. ELAINE BAXTER tells us about him
Great Puzzles and Competitions
Test your knowledge of space with:
Puzzle Page on page 12
Giant Wordsearch on page 31
Get your entry in the next issue of Voyage
Caption Competition on page 13
Photo Competition on page 35
WIN A Die-Cast Space Shuttle Model in our great competition on PAGE 16
1
A New Direction
Editor:
Mike Shayler
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2
Welcome to issue three of Voyage, the conclusion of it’s first
year. And now that the magazine is established, we want to help it
evolve into a valuable resource for students and schools. If you
can help, we’d like to hear from you.
• Educators (retired or active) who can expand upon the basic
curriculum with their knowledge of how it is taught
• Writers who can explain principles of space, such as how orbits work, why we
have seasons, why the planets spin and similar concepts
• Museums or attractions whose facilities offer outreach support
• Guidance on resources for schools (books, websites, CD ROMS)
• Anyone who would like to write about the benefits of space flight or the significant
breakthroughs (and their discoverers) in history
• Schools who have conducted space related science projects and want to report
about it
• Space related projects or clubs that schools and students can get involved in.
Please send your ideas to the Editor at voyage@bis-spaceflight.com or write to the
BIS Headquarters
Mike Shayler
Editor
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ASTRO INFO SERVICE LIMITED
SCHOOL PRESENTATIONS 2005/2006
AT HOME IN SPACE
JOURNEY ROUND THE SOLAR SYSTEM
ONE SMALL STEP
Packed with information, our shows include
audience participation, slideshows, video,
demonstrations, some real space hardware and a
lot of fun. Suitable for all ages, from 3 to 93!
To find out more and see some of the great comments about
our shows, just log on to our website at:
www.astroinfoservice.co.uk
and look under Presentations
or call us on 0121-422-8801
EYE ON THE SKY
The Neighbours
These two views of the MOON show just
how much detail Hubble can observe. The
Moon is too close to Earth for Hubble to
get a complete picture of it, so the whole
Moon image shown here is taken from an
Earth-based observatory. The ringed
feature is a 93 km wide impact crater
called Copernicus and the larger image
shows Hubble’s close-up view of that
feature, revealing the terraced walls of a
crater that was formed from the impact of
a large meteor millions of years ago.
When the meteor hit, it threw out a large
spray of Moon material across the
surface, the kind of splash you would get
from throwing a rock into sand
These four images of MARS were taken as the
planet went through its rotation. The visible
features on Mars have changed since the first
robot landings were made in the 1970s,
because the frequent dust storms have
covered and uncovered many features of the
planet over the years.
Some of the familiar features can still be seen,
however. At the top is the northern ice cap,
small in size because the images were taken
during the northern summer. In the top right
image, there is a small ring near the centre,
which is the giant volcano Olympus Mons,
and in the bottom right image, you can clearly
see the dark patch called Syrtis Major in the
centre and the large impact crater called
Hellas at the bottom. This crater often fills
with frost and water ice clouds.
All the images show a busy atmosphere of
clouds and storms.
This view of the tilted planet URANUS
clearly shows its faint ring system and
several of its moons. The large orange
spots on the planet itself are clouds which
can circle the planet at up to 500 kph. The
image has been colourised to make it easier
to pick out the features, but the brightest of
the clouds on the centre right is the
brightest cloud ever seen on the planet.
4
All the images on these pages are from the
Hubble website:
EYE ON THE SKY
http://hubblesite.org
This view of JUPITER shows the stripy
colouring of the planet and also the Great
Red Spot near the bottom. This is a
massive storm about 25,000 km across and
was first spotted by astronomers in the
17th Century, so the storm has been raging
for over 300 years. It does change shape
size and colour, but winds in this storm
can reach speeds of 450 kph. ↓
↑ This double image of SATURN shows the planet with its ring system
edge-on. In the top image, you can only see the shadow of where they
cross the planet. The large round shadow on the planet’s surface is
from the orange moon Titan (top left), on which the ESA probe Huygens
successfully landed in January 2005. Several of the other moons appear
as bright dots in these images.
↑ This double image of NEPTUNE shows the tremendously
violent stormy weather that affects the eighth planet. No one is
quite sure exactly what drives the weather on Neptune because
the Sun, which drives our own weather on Earth, is 900 times
dimmer out here. On Neptune, the wind can blow at over 1000
kph and huge storms come and go frequently. When the Voyager
probe arrived at Neptune in 1989, it observed a huge storm called
the Great Dark Spot, but it has since disappeared.
This image of VENUS was taken with an
ultra-violet camera, and then colourenhanced. The planet is covered by 30 km
thick sulphuric acid clouds and the ultraviolet camera can clearly show cloud
formations, such as the horizontal ‘Y’shaped cloud running across the middle.
This formation has been seen before by
probes sent to observe the planet and
may give clues as to how the atmosphere
behaves. →
5
EYE ON THE SKY
Far, Far Away
STAR CLUSTER →
This amazing image is of a gigantic nebula called,
rather blandly, NGC 3603. This image shows the
life-cycle of stars, from the giant gaseous pillars
(the finger-like objects on the right and bottom
right), through the starburst cluster of young and
very hot stars (the group of bright blue dots in the
centre) to the older blue supergiant star called
Sher 25 (the single blue point surrounded by the
ring just left of and above the cluster). Sher 25 is
coming to the end of its life but is surrounded by
newer and developing stars.
← BANG
This image shows a pair of huge billowing gas and dust clouds
erupting from a supermassive star called Eta Carinae. The star was
the site of a giant outburst of light about 150 years ago, making it
one of the brightest stars in the southern sky. But although it
emitted as much visible light as a supernova, the star seems to
have survived the explosion, probably because it is so massive. It
is believed to give out about 5 million times more power than our
own sun and is about 100 times as massive.
STELLAR DANCE →
Looking like a pair of evil galactic eyes, this image shows a close encounter between two spiral galaxies. The larger galaxy (NGC
2207 on the left) is already changing the shape of the smaller one (IC 2163 on the right), its gravitational forces stretching out the
material into long ribbons that extend thousands of light years off to the right of the image. Eventually, the two galaxies will merge
and become one - in a few billion years time.
6
EYE ON THE SKY
← HOURGLASS
When the brightest stars get old, they get cooler
and redder, increasing in size and energy output
and becoming known as Red Giants. Most of the
carbon and particles that help to form solar
systems like ours is produced by these Red
Giants. When the giant has ejected most of its
outer matter, the ultra-violet light from the exposed
core of the star makes all the ejected material
glow, which is why you get nebulas like this one
around MyCn18. The one thing we haven’t figured
out yet is why they form such different shapes, like
the hourglass in this image.
TARANTULA →
This is another nebula, called The Tarantula Nebula, in our
galactic near-neighbour the Large Magellanic Cloud. Also in
the Cloud is a cluster of brilliant massive stars known as
Hodge 301. They can be seen in the bottom right corner of this
image. Many of the stars in this starburst have exploded into
supernovae, blasting material out into the surrounding region
at great speed. This material is crashing into the Tarantula
Nebula and compressing the gases into the clouds and
shapes you can see here. Hodge 301 has three red supergiant
stars that are close to the end of their life and about to go
supernova (the three big orange spots), but Tarantula
contains gas globules and dust columns where new stars are
being formed, so the cycle of stellar life goes on.
← SPIRAL GALAXY
This magnificent image shows the
spiral galaxy known as NGC 4414. The
centre of the galaxy, as with most
spirals, is made up of mainly older
yellow and red stars, while the outer
spiral arms are more blue from the
continuing formation of younger stars.
The arms are also very rich in
interstellar dust, which can be seen as
streaks and dark patches silhouetted
against the starlight.
7
FEATURE
It’s Einstein’s Year
by Steven Cutts
2
E = MC
the patents office.
Einstein found his
day job so easy
that he had plenty
of time to
ruminate about
science.
Great Theories
Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
It’s “Einstein’s year” and if you didn’t
know that yet, you soon will do! A
whole host of media events have
been planned to commemorate the
hundredth anniversary of one special
year in the Great Man’s life.
Early Years
Einstein was born in Ulm in 1879 to
liberal Jewish parents and his early life
was as marked by underachievement
as his later life would be by genius. By
the beginning of the 20th century,
Einstein had managed to graduate from
a Swiss University in Zurich but
remained an unrecognised and under
rated force.
Unable to obtain work as a career
scientist, he found a job at a small
patents office in Switzerland. With
hindsight, such work might seem menial
for such a man, but Einstein, who was
at this time married with small children,
would later reflect fondly on his time in
8
Then, in 1905,
Einstein wrote
and submitted 3
new research
papers and these
were published in
the prestigious
German physics
journal, Annalen
der Physik. Had
he published just
one of these
three papers and
nothing else in
his entire life, he would still be immortal.
From time to time, an original copy of
one of these journals becomes
available for auction and people bid
ludicrous sums of money to own it. In
the history of physics, we call 1905 the
miracle year.
living in Nazi Germany and was forced
to leave Europe. Had he stayed, he
would almost certainly have been killed.
Holocaust
Nowadays, it’s common for European
intellectuals to rubbish America and
express their despair that such a ‘vulgar
and improper’ continent could have
surpassed their own. But it’s important
to remember that part of the reason this
happened is that within living memory,
European institutions murdered or
threatened to murder tens of millions of
people.
Some of the most brilliant of these
people ran away to the States. Europe’s
loss was America’s gain and Einstein
took up a chair in Princeton University,
New Jersey.
Einstein soon became an international
celebrity! He was treated like a movie
star and found himself invited to the
kind of social events that nowadays we
would associate with the likes of Sir Bob
Geldolf.
It’s well known that Einstein often
struggled in high school. He also had
difficulty obtaining a place in University.
As in adult life, the teenage Einstein
had a habit of adopting unusual
fashions and rebelling against authority.
However, Einstein was eventually
exposed to a formal University
education in Zurich. Teachers in any
era have a habit of spotting the
brightest kid in the class but his genius
had yet to blossom and no-one in
Zurich spotted Albert.
When I graduated from London
University with a degree in physics, I
imagined – perhaps immodestly – that I
understood about half of what Einstein
had done. Most of the people cheering
Einstein in his own life time understood
nothing of what he had done. But the
Einstein brand label had begun to
transcend the world of physics and
moved into the realm of politics and the
media. His unusual route to the top, his
rejection of fascism and his refugee
status from the Nazis all served to make
him an attractive icon for the liberal
elite.
The years that followed 1905 were filled
with both brilliance and political turmoil.
By the 1930s, Einstein found himself
Inevitably, Einstein acquired his fair
share of enemies too. Quite apart from
the Nazis there was an official anti
Einstein society. Perhaps part of the
reason for this was his own eccentricity
but envy must have played a part in the
process too. After all, there are plenty of
Premiership footballers who don’t like
David Beckham.
Inspiration
Even today, the Einstein “brand label”
remains a crowd pleaser. In the 1990s,
Bill Gates promoted a new software
package standing next to a plastic
statue of Albert. Others in the modern
world have looked at Einstein’s life and
tried to read a parable for the rest of us
to learn from. People take comfort from
the academic set backs in his early life,
his difficulty in obtaining a place at
University and the lack of early
recognition. If you’re struggling at high
school and your teachers have given up
on you, don’t despair!
You might just be the next Einstein.
At this point, I feel inclined to caution
against such logic. Things that apply to
the greatest of us do not carry
resonance for all of us. People like
“The world is a
dangerous place, not
because of those who
do evil, but because
of those who look on
and do nothing”
Albert Einstein
Einstein only come along once a
century so the odds are this isn’t true.
On the other hand, adolescence isn’t a
time for giving up.
SCIENCE
As far as space travel is concerned,
1905 is best remembered for Einstein’s
theory of relativity.
Special relativity changes everything.
Relativity makes it possible for men to
fly to the stars and relativity makes it
possible for men to travel through time.
So what is it, what does it mean and
FEATURE
why do science fiction writers get so
excited about it?
Special Relativity
Here it is in a nut shell.
Special relativity is all about the speed
of light.
The speed of light is 300 million metres
per second. If you want to understand
special relativity, remember that,
because in special relativity the speed
of light is always 300 million metres per
second. No matter who you are, or
where you’re standing, it’s always the
same.
For Example
Supposing we stand by the side of the
motorway and watch the cars drive by.
A car drives by at 60 miles per hour.
This is pretty fast, but at the same time,
we see another car overtaking at 65
miles per hour which is even faster.
Of course, if you were driving in the
slow car, you’d see it very differently.
The faster car drifts past you slowly,
overtaking at a mere 5 miles per hour.
At least that’s what we’d expect in the
ordinary world. As a teenager, Albert
Einstein started to see it differently.
Einstein dreamt that it might be possible
to travel at the speed of light.
At these kind of speeds, maybe things
would look different.
“The most beautiful
thing we can
experience is the
mysterious. It is the
source of all true art
and science”
Albert Einstein
9
FEATURE
Now supposing you were driving in a
car at almost the speed of light when
suddenly you find yourself being
overtaken by a laser beam.
How would that look for the people at
the road side?
Firstly the passers by would need
special equipment to judge your speed!
Both you and the laser beam would
whizz by at fantastic speed, but they’d
still notice the laser beam drift past you
very slowly.
So how about the car driver? What
would you see? You’re driving at almost
the speed of light so you’d watch the
laser beam overtake you leisurely to
your right. Right?
Wrong! Einstein decided that the driver
in the car would check his speedometer,
glance to his right and watch the laser
beam whizz by at…
300 million metres per second.
Doing the Time Warp
Speed is distance divided time and yet
two observers (one by the road side and
one in the car) have recorded two
completely different speeds for the laser
beam relative to the speed of the car.
How can this be?
If the relative speeds are clearly
different and yet the two observers have
recorded the same speed, what’s
changed?
Einstein said - Time has slowed down.
Einstein argued that at extremely high
speeds, time would slow down. That’s
how the speed of light always looks the
same to any observer no matter how
fast they’re going.
Travelling through Space
Now, supposing we set off on a mission
into outer space. We’re heading to
another star system so we need to
travel at nearly the speed of light. Even
10
at these speeds, it would take nearly 5
years to reach the nearest star, Alpha
Centauri which is a good 4 and a half
light years away. After a brief stay at
Alpha Centauri, the crew returns to
Earth and lands back at Cape
Canaveral about 10 years after they set
off.
This would be a major undertaking.
You’re asking a crew of professional
astronauts to sacrifice a full 10 years
out of their lives and their families back
on Earth would miss them badly.
Peter Pan
But when the astronauts return to Earth,
they have barely aged. Time has
passed so slowly in the space ship that
the crew barely noticed the journey. In
effect they have travelled not just to the
stars but into the future.
travel that fast! The astronauts that went
to the Moon managed to gain about a
quarter of a second of their lives (10
days in space, top speed 11 kilometres
per second) although I doubt in Neil
Armstrong noticed the difference when
he got back to Earth.
Similarly, very accurate atomic clocks
have been flown in jet planes for a few
hours and then returned to their
airports. Identical clocks left on the
ground read a different time. The clocks
on the ground are ahead by a tiny
fraction of a second, just as Special
Relativity predicted.
In the Slow Lane
There are two types of relativity. Special
Relativity is about two objects travelling at
a constant speed relative to each other.
General relativity is much more difficult
and concerns space ships that are
accelerating (changing speed) relative to
each other. When Einstein wanted to
write his General Theory of relativity he
had to take special maths lessons first.
General relativity needs “4 Vectors”
because in Einstein’s universe there are 4
dimensions to consider; three dimensions
in space and one in time.
At the moment of course, no one can
Einstein hadn’t exactly impressed his
Ever since Einstein came up with this
idea, science fiction writers have
produced novels about time travel using
speed of light travel.
FEATURE
“To imagine is
everything”
Albert Einstein
particle would increase as it travelled
faster.
Computer artwork representing the distortion of time at speeds approaching the
speed of light.
Detlev van Ravenswaay and the Science Photo Laboratory
teachers at University. When one of
his former tutors (Minlowski) finally
read Einstein’s theory of relativity, he
was amazed. “Imagine that! I would
never have expected such a smart
thing from that fellow.”
i.e. the faster you move, the heavier
you get. If a space ship tries to fly at
the speed of light, the mass of the
space ship increases enormously as it
accelerates. If it really could travel at
the speed of light, it would have
infinite mass, which is impossible.
That’s part of the reason why solid
objects can’t fly at the speed of light!
Although the tiny (mass less) particles
that make up light – photons - can.
Computer artwork illustrating the concept of warped space. This image shows
Earth distorting the space around it through its mass and gravity. The greater the
measurement of mass and gravity from a body, the more the space around it is
distorted.
Tony Craddock and the Science Photo Laboratory
Understanding the Rules
So what? you may say. Relativity is for
egg heads. It will be many years
before space ships can fly fast enough
to make time and interstellar travel
possible.
Maybe, but once you accept the
theory of relativity, a whole host of
other rules become apparent. These
rules changed our understanding of
physics and enable modern engineers
to build nuclear power, micro chips
and mobile phones. Unfortunately,
they also made possible nuclear
weapons.
The rules that apply in our everyday
lives don’t apply at fantastically high
speeds and although no human being
has travelled this fast yet, particles
within atoms have done.
Relativity predicted that the mass of a
11
PUZZLE PAGE
GRID WORD
Can you work out the answers to the clues below and fit them into the grid so that the answers spell out the word
‘ASTRONOMY’ in the centre column? The clues are not in the same order as the grid.
CLUES:
1. Planet nearest our sun
A
S
2. The first person to see Jupiter’s
moons Io, Ganymede, Callisto and
Europa
T
3. Ours is called ‘The Milky Way’
R
4. Australis or Borealis?
O
5. This planet has a moon called Charon
N
6. Our sun is one
7. This word spells the same backwards
or forwards (called a ‘palindrome’)
and means a system for detecting the
range, direction or presence of things
O
M
Y
8. We live on one called Earth
9. A gas or dust cloud in space
WORD PAIRS
In the grids below there are two sets of words. Can you match the first and last
names of the famous astronomers or work out which planet in our solar system
is being described?
Which description matches the planet or body. One has been completed to
start you off.
Find the astronomers. One pair of names
has been matched to start you off
Saturn
The Red Planet
Johannes
Hubble
Jupiter
The star in our Solar System
Isaac
Schiaparelli
Pluto
Fast moving planet nearest the Sun
Tycho
Flamsteed
Mars
Titan and the Rings
Nicolaus
Halley
Earth
The Morning or Evening Star
Galileo
Newton
Venus
Our only natural satellite
Clyde
Brahe
Mercury
Named after the ruler of the sea
William
Copernicus
Percival
Galilei
Neptune
The Blue Planet teeming with life
Edmond
Tombaugh
Uranus
The little planet found in 1930
Giovanni
Kepler
The Sun
Chunks of rock
Edwin
Herschel
The Moon
The Tilted Planet
John
Lowell
Asteroid Belt
The one with the Great Red Spot
Puzzles by Miranda Line
12
CAPTION COMPETITION
Tell us what you think these astronauts are thinking or saying. You can have more than one of them
speaking but please keep your answers short if you can — and nothing rude please!
In this photo are: (left to right) Scott Parazynski (NASA), Pedro Duque (ESA), and Curt Brown (NASA)
The best answers will be printed in the next issue and the one we consider the funniest will win.
THE PRIZE
We have 4 copies of the Voyager card game for the winner (see page 24, Issue 2).
Runners up will receive a copy of the next issue of Voyage.
Please mark your entry Caption Competition 3 and send to the address on page 2.
LAST ISSUE
There were no winning entries to last issue’s
competition, so we are carrying the prize over to
this one, but with a new picture.
Remember, you can enter by post or email. Just put
Caption Competition 3 in the subject line.
13
SPACE TODAY
Like many people, I expected the
Titan mission to fail. My gut feeling
was that the Huygens probe had a
20% chance of sending back one
photograph before it blew to pieces.
Flying to Titan was just too
ambitious. The immense distance
from Earth, the agonisingly low
temperatures and the unavoidably
high risk nature of a surface
landing all led me to believe that the
Titan landing would end in disaster.
I was wrong.
Right now, the Huygens probe looks like
a wild success. The European Space
Agency has a long way to go before it
can challenge NASA and the Russians
in the publicity stakes, but for a brief
moment on Titan they came close.
Although some data has been lost and
fog and cloud cover served to blur much
of the photography, enough material
came back to solve many mysteries.
So why did we go to Titan?
Titan is smaller than the Earth but
bigger than our own Moon. All in all, it’s
about the same size as the planet
Mercury. Had cosmic history trodden a
different path, a world the size of Titan
might well have ended up in orbit
around the Sun, in which case we’d
quite happily refer to it as a fully fledged
planet rather than a moon.
In the middle of the 20th century it
became apparent that Titan had an
unusual atmosphere. Early
spectroscopic studies managed to pick
up evidence of methane and other
hydrocarbons in the cloud cover. This
didn’t make sense because a planet (or
in this case a moon) needs gravity to
retain an atmosphere and the gravity on
Titan isn’t enough to do this. Just about
all the other moons around Saturn are
rocky, airless bodies similar to our own
Moon. So why was Titan so different?
As the 20th century progressed, another
idea emerged. It’s a fair bet that the
atmosphere on Titan is similar to the
Earth at the dawn of history. Scientists
were busy trying to recreate these
primordial conditions in the laboratory
14
HUYGENS on TITAN
by Steve Cutts
American space agency NASA decided
to divert it’s precious Voyager 1 probe
away from Saturn towards Titan. This
decision effectively represented an act
of self sacrifice, since a visit to Titan
made it impossible for Voyager 1 to
proceed to Uranus and Neptune.
However, the enthusiasm to visit Titan
was so great that the abandonment of
two entire systems was deemed
worthwhile.
and had already succeeded in
producing primitive organic molecules.
These molecules bear more than a
passing resemblance to the chemicals
in our own bodies so maybe these really
were the conditions in which life
emerged millions of years ago. If this
were true, Titan might represent an
immense chemical laboratory, spewing
out random organic molecules at a
fantastic pace. Astronomers began to
imagine a world with a methane
atmosphere, organic rain, and an ocean
thick with bleach.
In fact, Titan was so exciting that the
The first colour image of the surface of Titan
showing pebble-sized rocks through the haze.
For a few hours in the early 1980s,
Voyager 1 glimpsed a world shrouded in
cloud. No surface markings were visible
and it was clear that if we wanted to
look at the surface of Titan, we’d have
to go down there with a robotic probe.
Landing Mission
That’s why a robotic lander was added
to the Cassini orbiting robot. They
called it Huygens (after the astronomer
who first spotted Titan through a
telescope) and the plan was for the
American Cassini probe to release
Huygens as it approached Titan and
then change course to go on orbiting
Saturn. It was one of the most daring
adventures yet attempted in space
travel. Given the abysmal performance
of the European Beagle 2 lander on
Mars, what hope was there for
Huygens?
Well, at least some. The dense
atmosphere had obscured the surface
from space but it would make a surface
landing on Titan relatively easy. An
atmosphere enables a probe to bleed
off the fantastic kinetic energy of space
flight without using fuel. In addition,
Huygens could descend from the upper
atmosphere to the surface slowly, using
parachutes, thus enabling a variety of
instruments to analyse the cloud cover
on the way down.
Power Supply
The scientists who designed Huygens
reckoned that they could keep the
probe airborne for several hours. But,
as in all deep space missions, electrical
supply would be a problem and
Huygens had to rely on a battery.
SPACE TODAY
although conditions there were not as
expected.
This group of images
details a high ridge area
showing flowing channels
into what appears to be a
major river
Ever hopeful that Titan would turn out to
be a world with lakes and oceans, the
design team had actually planned for a
“splash down” (the probe could float!)
although in the event, it seems to have
come down on a soft, possibly tarry
surface.
the probe didn’t survive the landing.
Batteries are a bad source of electricity,
particularly on a mission into deep
space. Like the batteries in a lap top,
the device could only supply Huygens
for a few hours and then shut down.
Saturn (and Titan) is ten times further
from the Sun than the Earth and
sunlight intensity falls off according to
the inverse square law. The solar
panels would produce just 1% of their
power output here on Earth, so the
lander had to be charged up from the
nuclear power plant on Cassini while
still linked to the mother craft and then
released with all systems shut down to
avoid consuming any electricity. Several
days later, a tiny clock activated the
Huygens lander, fifteen minutes before
it hit the atmosphere. The battery then
had to keep Huygens alive as it
descended to the surface.
This was a desperately high risk thing to
do. Mission controllers are always
losing contact with deep space missions
and in this case, if they didn’t regain
contact in the first fifteen minutes, the
project would be a complete failure. On
the other hand, if they could pull it off, it
might just be the most successful
scientific adventure of all time.
Success
Much to the relief of all involved, almost
everything went right. Even after seven
years in space, the lander functioned
perfectly. Unlike the ill-fated Beagle 2
probe, it was designed to transmit
during the descent phase so that the
airborne data could be retrieved, even if
There was a minor problem with one of
the two radio channels and a couple of
hundred pictures were lost, but this is
acceptable in a mission of this
complexity.
All the retrieved pictures are available
on the internet, including the ones seen
here. It has to be said that most of them
won’t mean very much to the layman
but there’s an emerging mosaic image
from about 8000 metres that truly lives
up to expectations.
Apart from the Earth, Titan is the only
world that we can divide into land and
sea. Aerial shots show an area of light
land and a dark lake. There are hills
and valleys on the landed side of the
picture and the valleys are marked by
what appear to be
rivers, with smaller
rivers meeting up to
form larger ones and
distinct estuaries
leading out into the
ocean.
So what’s it made of? Well, if there is
fluid on the surface of Titan, it can’t be
water. The surface temperature is
-179OC so any water will be solid ice.
However, a hydrocarbon (eg methane
or ethane) rain may fall every few years,
cutting a path through the surrounding
hills and valleys on its way to the sea.
There, much of it evaporates, leaving an
organic semi-solid soup. The pebbles
that have been photographed around
the lander are probably solid water ice
(snowballs).
As expected, an hour after landing, the
batteries went flat and the Hugyen’s
probe died with it.
Doubtless men will try to get to Titan
again but the immense distances
involved (a billion kilometres) and the
limitations of current day rockets means
that it will be many years before the
Huygens data can be bettered.
All images in this article courtesy of
ESA/NASA/JPL/Arizona University
What does this mean?
Liquid rain fall on
Titan? Probably,
although it may reflect
fluid that oozes out
from deep underground
and then drains off into
a collection of streams.
The Huygens probe
does appear to have
A mosaic of Huygens images showing lighter coloured higher terrain
and darker coloured lower areas
landed in the lake
15
Voyage
PRIZE COMPETITION
This is an artist’s impression
of what we might do when we
go back to the Moon in the
future. To win the
competition, all you have to
do is answer the following
questions:
1. What year was the last
Apollo flight to the Moon?
a) 1972
b) 1982
c) 1992
2. The picture shows a small
lander coming in to land.
What was the name of the
Apollo 11 lander?
a) Spider
b) Columbia
c) Eagle
3) Where on the Moon did
Apollo 11 land?
a) Sea of Tranquillity
b) Sea of Crises
c) Ocean of Storms
Please mark your entry
Shuttle Competition and
send or email it to the
address on page 2
ISSUE 2
COMPETITION
Nobody correctly answered all
the questions in this
competition in issue 2, so
we’re carrying it over into this
issue.
16
WIN A
DIE-CAST SPACE SHUTTLE MODEL
17
Issues of
MR PILBEAM’S LABORATORY No. 2
Toy astronaut, firmly
attached to the hook. The
hook is freely attached to
the pivot arm.
You don’t need to book time on
NASA’s Vomit Comet to experiment
with gravity. These experiments
give you the chance to understand
gravity yourselves. The first one
(picture above) shows how to make
a simple gravity simulator out of
bits and pieces. No dimensions are
given, as everybody’s astronaut will
be different.
How to build it
You will need:
a toy astronaut or action figure
a wire coat hanger
35 mm film pot (or equivalent)
a screw eye
a length of dowel
wood or similar for the base
modelling material (eg papier mache)
glue and paint
Tools needed (all should be used by
adults or under adult supervision):
junior hacksaw or wire cutters, wood
glue; use of hand drill.
Method: All sizes depend on the size of
your figure. Those given are for a 100
mm action figure.
1. Cut your base to a suitable size. In
one end, drill a hole to take the
support pillar (approx 250 mm).
2. Near the top of the pillar, drill a small
hole and screw in the screw eye.
3. Fit and glue the pillar into the base,
and leave to set.
4. Cut approximately 400 mm from the
wire coat hanger, and bend as
18
Indicator marks on the
support pillar.
shown. If you put a little upside-down
v-shaped kink in the middle to act as
the fulcrum, it should settle on the
screw eye and not fall off. Bend a
loop in one end.
5. Cut another 100 mm of wire and
bend to a hook shape that will slip
through the loop on the arm. Crimp
this hook closed, so that it can’t slip
out of the loop, but is free to swing.
Attach your astronaut to the other
end of this wire (the hook on ours fits
between the astronaut and the
backpack). Check it swings freely.
This system is needed to make sure
the astronaut lands vertically on the
base.
6. Take the film pot, and bore holes
through the lid and the base. Make
these holes slightly smaller than the
wire to get a snug fit on the arm. Fill
the pot with Plasticene or something
else heavy, and place the arm
through the screw eye. Add the
counterweight, and adjust it until it
just balances the astronaut. Check
that it swings feely up and down.
7. Use modelling materials to make the
base look like a planet of your
choice.
Some words of wisdom
The simulator makes use of the theory
of moments. A moment is the turning
effect of a force, and is expressed in
Newton-metres.
Our simulator is a system, with various
forces acting upon it. The most
important is gravity, which we need to
neutralise for now. To do this, we need
Adjustable counterweight (a
weighted 35mm film pot).
This must be at the neutral
balance point when the
astronaut is just touching the
surface.
to find the mass in grams of the
astronaut. This is not likely to be much,
so use a reasonably sensitive balance.
Now, measure the distance from the
astronaut to the fulcrum in mm, and
multiply by the mass of the astronaut,
then divide by 10,000. This will give the
moment of the astronaut in newton
metres (see notes at the end).
What’s going on?
In a simple, balanced see-saw, the
forces acting on the left- and right-hand
sides of the fulcrum are the same.
These are known as balancing
moments. Moving the load at one end
will cause the see-saw to become
unbalanced, so to regain balance, the
load on the opposite side must either be
increased or its position changed. This
is known as the principle of moments,
and has the formula
force x distance, or Fd
Measure the available length of the
other side of the support arm to the
fulcrum. We need to make the
counterweight of sufficient mass so that
when you multiply its mass by its
distance to the fulcrum, its moment is
equal to the moment of the astronaut,
so that the system is balanced.
In other words
Astronaut Fd=Counterweight Fd
Because we are dealing in grams and
millimetres, we’ll need to divide the
Gravity
answer by 10,000.
For example, if the astronaut weighs
50 g [F] and the distance [d] to the
pivot is 15 cm, then the moment of
the astronaut is F x d [15x50] /10,000
= 0.075 newton metres. If the
counterweight weighs 100 g, then the
distance from the fulcrum needs to
be 7.5 cm in order to balance the
astronaut.
Do this correctly, and your astronaut
should be able to balance in a neutral
(weightless) condition and at this point,
the only forces acting on the astronaut
will come from the environment
(draughts etc). You can of course do all
of this by trial and error, but it may take
longer.
Now we come to calibrating. You need
to adjust the counterweight so that,
when you lower it to touch the support
pillar, and then let go, the astronaut will
hit the base, and bounce about 10mm.
This can be taken as Earth standard
gravity. Measure the distance of the
counterweight from the fulcrum and
record it. The bounce doesn’t have to
be 10 mm, but space suits are heavy on
Earth, and not very easy to jump about
in, so even a jump of 10 mm is pretty
spectacular for an astronaut only 100
mm high.
To simulate how high an astronaut
might bounce on Mars, we need to
know what Mars’ gravity is (it’s
approximately 38% of ours). To position
the counterweight so that the astronaut
bounces the right amount, we need to
MR PILBEAM’S LABORATORY No. 2
move it farther from the fulcrum. To find
this distance, divide the distance of the
counterweight from the fulcrum by 0.38,
and you will find that you have to move
it out to a distance of approximately 2.6
times this measurement.
The following table gives you relative
values of the planets in the Solar
System. Use these values to adjust the
simulator to see how far the astronaut
could jump.
Mercury: 0.38
Venus: 0.9
Moon: 0.17
Mars: 0.38
Jupiter: 2.64
Saturn: 1.16
Uranus: 1.17
Neptune: 1.2
Pluto: approx. 0.5
You can also research gravities of other
bodies, such as Phobos and Deimos,
the moons of Mars. Can you use your
simulator to give a meaningful result?
Why are the gravities of Jupiter and the
other gas giants similar to Earth’s,
despite their being so much bigger?
Weightlessness
Although astronauts in space are said
to be in zero gravity, this isn’t in fact so.
Gravity never disappears entirely, it just
gets weaker and weaker. If you move
twice as far from the centre of the Earth
as you are now, gravity decreases to
1/4 its surface value. Move three times
farther out, and it decreases to 1/9 and
so on, following the famous “inverse
square” law [see below]. At the height
the Shuttle orbits [a
mere 500 or so
kilometres], gravity
is still at 85% of its
surface value. In
fact, if the Shuttle
were to stop moving
relative to the Earth,
it would plummet
like a brick.
This is the real
secret. The Space
Shuttle is indeed falling, but its forward
momentum means that as it falls, the
curve of the Earth falls away from under
it at exactly the same rate, so that it can
never hit the Earth. Not only is the
Shuttle falling, but everything inside it is
falling, also at exactly the same rate. So
to the astronauts, the inside of the
shuttle appears stationary, and they
[plus anything else loose] seem to be
weightless.
Weightlessness happens in a very
slight way in a lift as it starts down. You
aren’t attached to the lift, so for a split
second it leaves you behind, because
your own inertia means you start to fall
slightly later than the lift. You then
almost “float” for a very tiny length of
time inside, but falling at the same rate
as the lift. Obviously, you don’t lose
contact with the lift, unless it suddenly
starts to drop very fast.
So if you were to be caught in a rapidly
There will be another great
experiment from Mr Pilbeam’s
Laboratory in the next issue. We’d
like to hear how your experiments
went, so if you want to send in a
class report, or pictures of your
spacecraft designs, we’ll put the
best ones in the magazine.
Mr Pilbeam’s Laboratory presents
a variety of interactive activities
ranging from the Victorian era to
the Space Age, including
presentations on the phenomena
of reflection, the exploration of
Mars, rockets and robots.
Although primarily aimed at able
children in Key Stages 2, 3 and 4,
the activities are suitable for a
wide range of audiences, including
special interest groups for adults
or children.
IF YOU WOULD LIKE MR
PILBEAM’S LABORATORY TO
VISIT YOUR SCHOOL, CONTACT
TREVOR SPROSTON AT
sproston@ntlworld.com
19
MR PILBEAM’S LABORATORY No. 2
falling lift, would you be able to save
yourself by jumping just before it hit the
bottom?
Experiment 1.
Some experiments
The effects of free fall can be shown in
various ways using simple household
junk. Try some of the following and see
what results you get. You might want to
video some of these ideas, and play
them back at a slower speed
1. Take a 2 litre pop bottle, and poke a
small hole in it, about 60mm from the
bottom. Fill it with water, but keep the
hole covered. Stand it on a level
surface [preferably outside], and
uncover the hole. Observe the path
Experiment 2.
2. Get hold of a shoe box or similar,
some string, and an action figure.
Stand the shoebox on its end, and
poke a hole through the top. Tie the
string to the action figure and thread
it through the hole from the inside.
Pull on the string until the figure is at
the top of the box, then let go. The
figure obviously falls down. Now hold
the box in the air by the string, let go
and drop the box –what happens and
why? You might want to decorate the
inside of the box to make it look like
a spacecraft, but that’s up to you.
3. This one is messy. You’ll need a
small water bomb balloon, a strong
cardboard box, a weight, a pin and
some rubber bands.
Experiment 3.
of the water stream as it comes out.
Why does the water come out?
Essentially, because the water can
escape, gravity is making it fall faster
than the bottle (which can’t fall, as it’s
standing on something) so it runs
out. Repeat the experiment, only this
time stand on a chair and drop the
bottle without spinning it, while a
partner watches the path of the water
stream. Do this several times. What
difference do you see, and why do
you think this happens?
20
Arrange the equipment as shown.
The weight should stretch the rubber
bands so that there is clear space
between the balloon and the point of
the pin, but the weight shouldn’t
touch the bottom of the box. Carefully
pick up the box, and let it fall. What
should happen is that the rubber
bands, being in free fall, aren’t
affected anymore by gravity, so they
contract and pull the pin up, so that it
bursts the balloon. Very messy, but
very satisfying. Try it again with string
instead of rubber bands. What do
you think will happen now?
4. The next idea dates back at least to
1901, but is useful for illustrating the
behaviour of the Shuttle in orbit. To
make this, you’ll need some basic
craft tools, a tube, some rubber
bands, a little bit of wood and wire,
and a couple of marbles. The original
engraving shows the mechanism:
You could use it as an inspiration for
your own device. Perhaps a school
piston trolley would provide the
business end.
If you do decide to design your own,
the following diagram shows a
simplified version.
Your dowel will need to move freely
in the tube, like a piston, but not be a
sloppy fit. Attach the rubber bands to
the dowel and to either side of the
plastic tube. Now this is where you
have to be clever. You’re going to
bend the wire so that it holds one
Experiment 4.
MR PILBEAM’S LABORATORY No. 2
marble at the mouth of the gun,
whilst the weight of the other marble
holds it in place. When you pull back
the plunger and let it go, it will hit the
first marble, which will fly out of the
tube, simultaneously [we hope!]
allowing the second one to drop
straight down. If everything has
worked well, both marbles should hit
the ground at the same time. In a
small way, this is what’s happening
to the shuttle. If it was stationary, it
would drop, but its forward
momentum keeps it going forwards
as fast as the Earth curves away
beneath it, so that it never hits the
ground.
This diagram is intended as a guide
only. The trickiest part will be the little
frame to hold the marbles in place.
You’ll need to make sure that the first
marble doesn’t get blocked by the
second one.
Send in your ideas if you come up with
a better way, and I’ll include your
credited plan on my website.
Videos and photos of some of these
experiments are also available on the
Mr Pilbeam website:
www.pilbeamslab.co.uk
Notes
newton [N]
The newton is the SI unit of force.
One newton is the force required
to give a mass of 1 kilogram an
acceleration of 1 metre per second
per second. It is named after the
English mathematician and
physicist Sir Isaac Newton (16421727).
Moment of a force
In physics, this is the measure of
the turning effect, or torque,
produced by a force acting on a
body. It is equal to the product of
the force and the perpendicular
distance from its line of action to
the point, or pivot, about which the
body will turn. The turning force
around the pivot is called the
moment. Its unit is the newton
metre.
Piston held back
under tension
Piston released
The moment of a force can be
worked out using the formula:
moment = force applied ×
perpendicular distance from the
pivot. If the magnitude of the force
is F newtons and the
perpendicular distance is d metres
then:
moment = Fd
I am indebted to Dr Chris Welch of
Kingston University, and to Mr
Roger Parsons for their invaluable
help in preparing this article.
21
ON THE COVER
DEATH OF A STAR
The brightest and heaviest
stars go through a spectacular
death sequence when they
come to the end of their lives.
After swelling up into brilliant
supergiant stars, they explode,
blowing themselves apart in a
huge supernova.
A supernova shines brightly for
a short time before it fades
away. The outer layers of the
star are blasted off into space
at great speed while the core of
the star is often squashed by
the supernova explosion to
form a Neutron Star
Sometimes, this gravity can
become too strong and the star
shrinks even further until it
vanishes and becomes a Black
Hole. At the centre of the black
hole, the star that died is
crushed out of existence by the
strength of the gravity. Nothing
can get out of a black hole, but
they can be detected by the gas
swirling around them, which
heats up as it disappears into
the black hole.
22
↑
Neutron stars are very small,
often only a few kilometres
across, but because the matter
in a neutron star is squeezed
very tightly, they are also
incredibly heavy. Just a
spoonful of such material
would weigh as much as Mount
Everest! With such a
concentration of mass, the
gravity of a neutron star is very
strong.
SUPERNOVA 1987A
In February 1987, astronomers
had the chance to see this
supernova in a small nearby
galaxy called the Large
Magellanic Cloud. The supernova
(shown in this Hubble image by
the large arrow) is surrounded by
the rings of gas thrown off by the
star before it exploded and the
remains of the exploded star are
in the centre of the middle ring.
The material ejected into space by
this supernova is then recycled in
other stars. Our own sun is
principally made of hydrogen and
helium, but contains some
additional elements that were
ejected by previous supernovae
and were incorporated into our
solar system during its formation.
Our sun is not big enough to go
supernova when it dies and will
follow a different cycle. When the
sun’s hydrogen core is almost
used up, it will start to collapse
and get hotter. The sun will
increase in size with this increase
in temperature, becoming a red
giant that will be big enough to
engulf the inner planets of the
solar system. Eventually, the core
of the sun will become hot
enough to start the fusion of
helium into carbon and the core
will grow smaller and denser. The
sun will begin to contract and
shrink to a fraction of its size
today. At this point, it will be what
is known as a White Dwarf and
will slowly cool off. But we don’t
have to worry about this yet
because it’s not expected to
happen for about another 4
thousand million years!
23
Who’s Who in Space
Michael Foale
by Elaine Baxter
Michael Foale (PhD) was born to
RAF Air Commodore Colin Foale
and his American wife Mary in
Lincolnshire, England on 6 January
1957. Inspired at a young age by the
idea of space flight, after spending
most of his childhood and
university years in England, he later
used his dual nationality status to
join NASA and was selected as a US
astronaut. He is now a veteran of
six space flights and is the current
holder of the US record for time
spent in space having logged over
374 days, including four space
walks totalling almost 23 hours.
Foale considers Cambridge, England
to be his hometown; and it was at
Queen’s College in Cambridge
University that he completed an
undergraduate degree in natural
sciences and a doctorate in
astrophysics. During this time, he
participated in scientific scuba diving
projects and gained his private pilot’s
licence – skills that would later
become important for his astronaut
training. He also maintains interests in
wind surfing and writing children’s
computer software.
24
Foale first moved to Houston in
Texas to work on Space Shuttle
navigation problems at the
McDonnell Douglas Aircraft
Corporation. He then joined
NASA and was selected as an
astronaut candidate in 1987,
although it wasn’t until 1992 that
he made his first space flight,
becoming the second Briton to
journey into space following
Helen Sharman’s trip to the
Russian Mir space station in
1991. Between space flights, he
has also worked as a payload
officer at the Johnson Space
Center, flown the Shuttle Avionics
Integration Laboratory simulator
to test flight software, and
developed crew rescue and
integrated operations for the
International Space Station
Alpha. He has served as Chief of
the Astronaut Office Expedition
Corps and Assistant Director
(Technical) of the Johnson Space
Center in Houston.
Foale’s early missions were on board
the Space Shuttle: he served as a
Mission Specialist on missions STS-45
and STS-56, which carried retrievable
ATLAS satellites studying the
atmosphere and solar interactions, and
on STS-63, which was the first Shuttle
rendezvous with the Russian Space
Station Mir. This mission also included
Foale’s first EVA (extravehicular activity
or spacewalk).
He then began training for his role in the
Shuttle-Mir programme – which involved
co-operation between the US and
Russian manned space programmes,
as preparation for the construction and
operation of the International Space
Station. In preparation for his mission,
Foale trained at the Cosmonaut
Training Centre in Star City, Russia and
also spent long hours learning Russian
– a skill which later earned him great
respect from his Russian colleagues.
Foale spent four and a half months on
board Mir, launching on the Shuttle’s
STS-84 mission on 5 May 1997 and
returning on STS-86 on 6 October of the
same year. His role initially involved
conducting science experiments, but he
later found himself acting as a flight
engineer helping to repair Mir after it
suffered a collision with a Progress
unmanned re-supply ship. This collision
resulted in major damage to the space
station’s Spektr module – which
contained all of Foale’s personal
NASA Astronaut
unavailability of the
Space Shuttle fleet
since Shuttle
Columbia had been
destroyed in an
accident.
belongings. He and one of his Russian
crewmates conducted a six hour
spacewalk in order to inspect the
damage. His stay on board Mir was
certainly an eventful one, during which
he and his colleagues narrowly escaped
death, but he was at least able to
complete several important science
experiments, and he became well
integrated into the Russian crews on
board during his stay. During the
mission, he was able keep in contact
with his family, including his wife
Rhonda and their two children Jenna
and Ian, with the help of ham radio
enthusiasts around the world.
Only two
crewmembers are
currently allowed
on board the ISS
while the Shuttle
fleet is grounded, in
order to limit the
use of essential
supplies such as
water. Routine
maintenance and
scientific
experiments took
up most of the crew’s time, as
construction work on the Space Station
is also on hold until Shuttle flights
resume. Their six month stay included a
three hour EVA – to prepare for the
upcoming launch of a new unmanned
cargo ship, the European Space
Agency’s ‘Jules Verne’ Automated
Transfer Vehicle.
Michael Foale calls himself an ‘addict
for space flight’. He has been lucky
enough to see many incredible things,
and to fulfil a childhood dream of visiting
space. Through his involvement with the
international space programme, he has
ensured that even when his record for
time spent in space is broken, this
British astronaut will be remembered as
one of the greatest contributors to the
co-operative manned exploration of
space.
Sources:
http://news.bbc.co.uk
http://www.nasa.gov
“Waystation to the Stars” by Colin Foale
Mike Foale’s Space Record
Mission
Aboard
Date
Duration
STS-45
Shuttle
24 Mar - 2 Apr 1992
8 days 22 hours
EVAs
0
STS-56
Shuttle
8 Apr - 17 Apr 1993
9 days 6 hours
0
STS-63
Shuttle
2 Feb - 11 Feb 1995
8 days 6 hours
4 hrs 39 mins
NASA 5
Mir
15 May - 6 Oct 1997
144 days 14 hours
6 hrs 00 mins
STS-103
Shuttle
19 Dec - 27 Dec 1999
12 days 19 hours
8 hrs 10 mins
Expedition 8
ISS
18 Oct 2003 - 30 Apr 2004
194 days 18 hours
3 hrs 55 mins
378 days 15 hours
22 hrs 44 mins
6000 Orbits
4 EVAs
Total Flight Time
6 Missions
His next role in space was that of
Mission Specialist on the STS-103
mission – an eight day mission on
board Shuttle Discovery to repair and
upgrade systems on the Hubble Space
Telescope. During an eight hour EVA,
he helped to replace the telescope’s
main computer and guidance sensor.
After three years on Earth, Foale’s
latest challenge was as Expedition Eight
Commander on the International Space
Station (with experienced Russian
colleague Alexander Kaleri) between 18
October 2003 and 29 April 2004. Foale
and Kaleri were launched from and
returned to Kazakhstan aboard a
Russian Soyuz vehicle, due to the
25
THE NIGHT SKY
This is the second in a series of
articles designed to help newcomers
enjoy the wonders of our magnificent
night sky. In the previous article, we
looked at naked eye astronomy, and I
hope you have had the opportunity to
view some of the spectacular objects
that were around during the late
autumn/early winter. I also hope that
you have begun to find your way
around the sky, using the star
hopping techniques that were
mentioned. This knowledge of the
sky will become important when we
start to use optical equipment.
Equipment Choices
So on to what this article is about,
namely choosing and using your optical
equipment.
Binoculars
Conventional wisdom suggests that the
first item of optical equipment you
should buy is a pair of binoculars, rather
than a telescope. Well, not for the first
time, I’m going to turn conventional
wisdom on it’s head and suggest that
binoculars are not necessarily the best
choice to begin with. Why, when
virtually every book you can buy on the
subject says binoculars first?
There are a number of reasons I would
suggest a telescope as your primary
purchase. Firstly, price. In the recent
past decent telescopes were in the
£500+ bracket and therefore binoculars
were a better choice for beginners who
might lose interest after a while. This is
no longer the case because you can
26
2. The Right Stuff:
easily purchase a decent beginners
telescope made by a reputable
manufacturer for under £150, and even
under £100! This places them in the
same price bracket as binoculars!
Secondly, binocular viewing is fine BUT
it’s very hard to obtain a steady view for
more that a minute or so (your arms
move, and the heavier the binoculars,
the harder it is to hold them still).
Ah but the books say “lean on a wall or
gate.” That’s fine (again for a short
while), providing there is one
conveniently placed and in the right
direction for what you are looking at.
Again the books say, “buy a tripod and
mount for your binoculars.” Well, decent
binocular mounts and tripods, are NOT
cheap! (those little ball and socket
things are really of little value) so once
you have purchased your binoculars/
tripods and mounts (or image stabilised
binoculars) you will have spent more
than the cost of a good small telescope.
Thirdly, if you plan on sharing your
viewing experiences with others, one
thing you can’t do with unmounted
binoculars is pass them to your friends
or classmates and expect them to be
able to find what you were looking at, as
they will be starting from scratch. I know
from personal experience that it can be
very hard, if not impossible, to guide
someone with binoculars to an object in
the sky.
Finally, the biggest advance in amateur
astronomy in recent years has been the
introduction of computerised
telescopes. These ‘go to’ scopes as
they are called will find objects for you,
but much more importantly, will
compensate for the Earth’s rotation by
tracking in the opposite direction. This
means that objects remain in the
viewfinder of a scope for long periods!
Sadly this technology has not filtered
through to the binocular market at
anything approaching affordable prices
yet. Therefore, while I’m not at all
dismissive of binoculars (I use mine
frequently) I would advocate a
telescope as your first purchase.
By Dave Buttery, FRAS
“Conventional
Wisdom says buy
binoculars first. We
think you should buy
a telescope!”
Buying Binoculars
However before we leave binoculars, if
you do decide to get some, a bit of
information may be helpful when
choosing what to buy. Every binocular
has a two-number designation, such as
6×30 or 8×50. The first number is the
magnifying power or magnification, and
the second is the diameter of the
objective (front) lenses in millimetres –
the aperture of each lens. But you
shouldn’t assume that the higher the
power the better. Higher powers are
indeed generally preferable, as they
penetrate light pollution more effectively
and are especially desirable for double
stars, star clusters, and certain other
objects such as the moons of Jupiter,
but high power also narrows the field of
view (making it harder to find your way
among the stars), and, worst of all,
magnifies the dancing of the stars when
the instrument is held in the hands. For
this last reason, 10 power (10×) is the
maximum usually recommended for
hand-held binoculars.
With regard to aperture, the bigger the
objective lenses, the brighter the stars,
and the fainter the object that can be
seen. Here the astronomer should
compromise least. Most astronomical
objects are hard to see not because
they are small and need more
magnification, but because they are
faint and need more aperture. A pair of
8×50s collects twice as much light as
all-purpose 8×35s! Therefore the best
all-round beginning type for
astronomical observations are 10x50.
Telescopes
Now comes the interesting stuff! There
are so many different telescopes on the
market from various manufacturers that
Choosing Equipment
you, A reputable telescope dealer is my
choice, as you will get advice and help
should anything go wrong, but quality
scopes by the above manufacturers can
be bought elsewhere, if you have the
eye for a bargain (but are happy to
accept a low level of after sale service).
Before Christmas 2004, ASDA were
selling nice little Meade scopes for
under £75 and even ALDI & LIDL have
decent telescopes from time to time. It’s
the manufacturer you need to look for!
Telescope Types
Broadly speaking there are two main
types of scope: Reflecting and
Refracting. All the other types you may
find or read about are variants of these
two.
at first glance the choice can be not
only confusing but overwhelming! What
I am going to look at here are the sub
£350 telescopes. This should help
remove some of the vast array of types
from our equation.
Before we go any further however, shun
the flimsy, semi-toy, “600 power!”
department-store scopes that may have
caught your eye. The telescope you
want has to have two essentials: highquality optics and a steady, smoothly
working mount. You will not get these
two basic requirements from a toy store
scope and not only will you have wasted
your money, but you will probably be so
disillusioned that you will pack up the
hobby altogether! These days you can
get a good make for the same price as
the ‘toy-store rubbish’.
Before we go any further I must stress I
have no vested interest in any particular
manufacturer’s equipment (in fact I own
4 telescopes by 3 different makers).
There are a number of good
manufacturers but the most commonly
advertised in the magazines are
Celestron & Meade (www.celestron.com
& www.meade.com are the
manufacturers websites). Each make a
wide variety of types of scope to meet
all budgets, and with these products as
well as others like Orion, SkyWatcher,
Intes, Bressier etc, quality is assured.
The choice of where you buy is up to
The ‘traditional’ scope is a refractor.
You look through one end and see out
of the other. These are cheaper than
Reflectors at smaller apertures, but at
sizes bigger than 3" their prices rocket
dramatically. Apart from the lens
material and coatings, there are no
variants of refractors.
THE NIGHT SKY
Reflecting telescopes are what most
people think of when they think of
astronomy. You view the image via a
mirror and an eyepiece, so you look into
the side of the scope often near the top.
There are a number of variants of
reflecting telescopes such as MaksutovCassegrain, Schmidt-Cassegrain, and
Schmidt-Newtonian, but as these types
are beyond our budget of £350, we will
look at these another day.
Don’t forget portability and
convenience. Your first telescope
shouldn’t be so heavy that you can’t
take it outdoors, set it up, and take it
down reasonably easily. I use my
smaller scopes far more often than the
larger ones as they are more portable
(and I have a van for my work).
Refractors
Refracting telescopes are the ‘general
purpose scope’. If you want a telescope
that can be used for moderate star
gazing (forget close up views of the
planets and galaxies, unless you want
to spend thousands) and bird watching
The two main tyopes of telescope: On the left is
a Refractor and above is a Reflector
27
THE NIGHT SKY
etc, then your ONLY choice is a
Refractor.
A comparison of the main
telescope types. In a
Refractor (top) you look in
one end and see out the
other. In a Reflector
(bottom), you look through
the side and the image is
reflected off the mirrors
Refractors are fairly cheap if the lens
diameter (Aperture) is below 3" but get
very expensive beyond this. They are
simple scopes with very little to go
wrong and require little or no setting up
A Star Diagonal.
– you just point and look! Keep the lens
clean and protected and you’ll have
years of trouble free viewing. You look
in one end and see out of the other, but
to make life a bit easier you can use a
Star Diagonal (below) which turns the
image 90° to make for more comfortable
viewing, particularly when viewing
images high overhead (unless you like
lying on your back), although this does
rotate the image as well.
Reflectors
Most people associate this type of
scope with astronomy, and with good
reason! They are only useful for star
gazing. Trying to view a bird through a
reflecting scope is possible, but believe
me it’s very complicated! You look into
the scope at right angles to the tube, as
the image is reflected from the bottom
of the tube using the scope’s primary
mirror, via a smaller secondary mirror to
the eye. The secondary mirror is
suspended in the middle of the tube on
what is referred to as ‘the spider’
(anything from two to four small rods).
While for value for money you can’t
beat a basic reflector (they are quite
cheap up to 6" or even 8" depending on
the mount as all they are is a pipe and a
28
couple of mirrors), they do require more
careful handling because if the two
mirrors get out of alignment, you get
either a very poor image or no image at
all (this is called collimation, keeping
the mirrors aligned). Also you should
not let anything fall down the tube
(forbid the thought) as not only can it
damage the primary mirror, but if it’s a
‘bit of paper’, it’s a devil of a job to get it
out. One thought to finish this section.
You can often see 3" or smaller
reflectors for sale, but personally I
wouldn’t touch a reflector smaller than
4" as refractors are great small scopes
and require far less maintenance.
We’ll look at the various mount options
next time, as they are a subject that
requires a lot of explanation, but before
we finish, two things have to be said
about astronomy through a telescope or
binoculars concerning the two brightest
objects in the sky; The Moon and Sun.
These are the two most obvious
astronomical objects, the two easiest to
see, and the two most problematical to
the beginner. Firstly, let’s deal with the
Sun. NEVER look at the sun through
ANY optical aid directly or you will go
blind! Simple as that, no ifs or buts! But
the Sun is great to see if its image is
projected on to card (we’ll look in detail
at this another time) or viewed through
a solar filter. These are cheap (under
£20), easy to make or fit, and give
100% protection. They fit over the main
lens of a refractor, or the open end of a
reflector, but please don’t buy models
that go over the eyepiece, as they are
extremely dangerous if even slightly
damaged (and you may not know
there’s a problem before it’s too late).
The Moon is a favourite object of many
astronomers. It’s easy to find, easy to
see, and even through the most modest
of scopes the detail you can view is
breathtaking! But don’t make the
mistake of viewing it at a full Moon,
because it is dazzlingly bright. If you
want to view a full Moon use a neutral
density or Moon filter to prevent your
eyes from being damaged. However,
the best time to view the Moon is before
or after it’s full phase, when you can
look along what is called the terminator
(the line between night and day) and
see the craters truly come alive! The
shadow’s in and around the craters
show their depth and detail in
spectacular fashion and there’s a
different view every night! In fact you
can spend a lifetime studying the Moon,
Inside a Reflector Telescope
Filters to protect
your eyes. (left) a
Moon Filter (far
left) different Sun
filters for different
scopes
“NEVER look at the
Sun directly through
any optical aid or
you will go blind!”
and never get bored.
What’s in the sky this Spring?
Before we finish, let’s just check what’s
around in the sky in late winter/early
spring.
Well, lots actually; it’s a great time for
observations. From March onwards, the
great winter constellations (Orion,
Taurus and Gemini) are beginning to
set in the west by mid evening, but the
spring ones (Leo, Bootes and Virgo) are
high in the southern sky.
Planet watching is ok, but limited.
Venus, which has dominated the sky for
over a year, is now around the far side
of the Sun, so is not visible. Mars is
brightening in the morning sky in the
constellation of Capricornius and Jupiter
is visible all night long blazing away in
Virgo (if you have a scope look for the
pinpricks of light beside it; these are it’s
inner (Galilean) moons). Saturn remains
bright in Gemini, but is only visible in
the early evening, as Gemini sets early.
The Beehive cluster M44 in Cancer (an
inverted Y) between Gemini and Leo is
a great object to view through a scope.
There are few other phenomena to view
and the only meteor showers are faint,
so concentrate on looking at the stars
and seeing their beautiful colours.
Instrument images courtesy www.starizona.com
Star maps created using ‘Starry Night’
THE NIGHT SKY
A view of the Moon’s terminator between day
and night, showing the detail of the craters
Cancer
M44
Auriga
Gemini
Canis Minor
Monoceros
Taurus
Orion
The Beehive cluster M44 in the constellation of
Cancer (see chart on the left)
Dave Buttery is a Fellow of the
Royal Astronomical Society and a
member of many Astronomical
and Educational groups.
SW
Canes Venatici
Leo
Come Berenices
Bootes
Sextans
Crater
Virgo
Corvus
Hydra
He is the senior partner in AURIGA
Astronomy, an astronomical
education service for schools,
which helps teachers with the
astronomical components of the
National Curriculum via his mobile
planetarium ‘The Auriga Star
Dome’.
For further details on what Dave
can offer your school, call
01909 531507 or visit AURIGA
Astronomy’s website
www.auriga-astronomy.com
29
DID YOU KNOW ABOUT..?
TIME AND SPACE
SPEED OF LIGHT
Light travels at 300,000 kilometres per second. That
works out as roughly:
18,000,000 km per minute
1,000,000,000 km per hour
26,000,000,000 km per day
181,500,000,000 km per week
726,000,000,000 km per month
9,500,000,000,000 km per year.
That’s 9.5 million million kilometres in one year,
called a Light Year
BEST SPEED
Those numbers seem difficult to comprehend, so let’s
see how fast we can go. In order to escape Earth orbit
and head off into space, a spacecraft has to reach at
least 40,000 kilometres per hour. At that speed, the
spacecraft would be able to cover:
960,000 km per day
7,000,000 km per week
27,000,000 km per month
349,000,000 km per year
At that rate, it would take us over 27,000 years to
cover a Light Year
A GALAXY FAR, FAR AWAY
When you realise that the nearest star system to ours
is over 4 light years away, you can see why we haven’t
gone there yet! It would take us 117,000 years to reach
it in the fastest spacecraft we have at the moment
LOOKING BACK IN TIME
Because of the huge distances involved, whenever
you look up at the stars, you are actually looking back
in time. The light from the nearest star system to ours
has taken over 4 years to reach us, so today we are
seeing what that system was like over 4 years ago.
There are many star systems that are so far away that
we are only now seeing what they were like at the time
the dinosaurs walked on Earth and there are systems
even further away than that.
SUNLIGHT
Even the light from our own sun takes a while to
reach us. The sun is over 150,000,000 km away,
so its light takes more than 8 minutes to get
here. If you could turn the sun off instantly like a
light bulb, it would still be 8 minutes before it
went dark on Earth.
GALACTIC SUBURB
Our sun and the stars that make up the constellations are just part of a grouping of stars
known as a Galaxy. Our Galaxy is estimated to be about 100,000 light years across, so
even light would take 100,000 years to get from one side to the other. When you consider
that there are over 100,000 million stars in our galaxy alone and that there are countless
other galaxies in our universe, the odds that there is life out there somewhere seem better
than we might think. Whether we will ever be able to ‘boldly go and explore strange new
worlds’ is a different matter.
30
GIANT WORDSEARCH - CONSTELLATIONS
Hidden in this grid are the names of many of the constellations you can see in the night sky, some with their
latin names and some with their more familiar ones. Mixed in with these are a few stars and the names of
some of our famous astronomers. Words in the grid can run backwards, forwards, up, down and diagonally.
Answers on Page 42/43
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WORD LIST
Andromeda
Aquila
Aries
Aristotle
Auriga
Bootes
Brahe
Cancer
Cassiopeia
Coma Berenices
Copernicus
Corona Borealis
Crux
Draco
Equuleus
Eratosthenes
Galileo
Gemini
Great Bear
Halley
Hercules
Herschel
Hubble
Huygens
Kepler
Lacerta
Leo
Lynx
Lyra
Newton
Orion
Pavo
Pegasus
Perseus
Pisces
Plough
Ptolemy
Rigel
Sagitta
Serpens
Sextans
Taurus
Thales
Ursa Minor
Vega
Puzzle by Mike Wilson of Free Spirit Writers
31
HOW IT WORKS
Orbital Mechanics
Every object ever discovered that
isn’t resting (‘gravitationally bound’)
on the surface of another, bigger
body, is moving relative to everything
else that exists. And every solid
object, star and gas cloud, no matter
how lightweight, has a gravitational
pull swinging the tracks of other
freely moving objects towards and
around it.
An orbit is simply the path an object
traces through space, Orbital Mechanics
is the study of the paths things follow in
space, and how orbiting bodies affect
one another’s future paths. It covers
more than how natural objects in space
(meteors and moons to planets, galaxies
and whole galactic clusters) have their
courses altered by other objects’ gravity
fields.
It started as part of the science of
astronomy, with early observers’ trying
to understand and explain the ways they
saw other planets’ moons orbiting, or
comets taking unusual, sometimes
changing paths around the Sun. But a
lifetime ago it began to become part of
practical engineering, and now it’s vital
to every space mission and the most
effective way of getting about the solar
system.
The best space travel power supply
we’ve got, for now, is the gravity of
planets and stars – or of the sun. It’s
always there, needs no fuel, can be used
any number of times, and always works
when it’s needed. But to use it, a
spaceprobe or ship needs to be already
by Gary Walters
in space, in its own independent orbit.
Since we have to start on Earth,
unfortunately, we have to use huge
amounts of rocket power to get anything
into space at all. But once we have a
spaceprobe into an orbit of its own, its
on board rocket engine can work really
effectively.
As it happens, the rocket is quite good
for changing an orbit quickly, converting
its fuel’s stored energy into kinetic
energy (changed orbital speed). But
rockets are nothing like so good as a
planet’s or even a modest moon’s gravity
and rockets and a strong local gravity
field can work together in a more
efficient and flexible way than either one
alone. They do it by putting a subtle twist
on what happens whenever a small,
natural object’s orbit passes closer than
usual to a far
larger one.
A concept image of a mission to Mars, with the spacecraft firing its
engines to change its orbital speed and bring the craft into the correct
orbital path to circle the planet.
32
If, picking an
example close to
home, a small
asteroid (down to
the bus size and
few dozen tons
mass we might
prefer to call a big
meteor) crosses
the Moon’s path,
the pull of the
Moon’s gravity will
change its course.
It can’t switch its
path through a
right angle
instantaneously,
but it drags against the body’s inertia
from following its original orbit and over
time, these forces between them put the
body on a constantly-changing path – a
curve. All orbits, natural or artificial are
always curves and since gravity’s pull
increases as it nears the Moon’s centre
of gravity, while the smaller object’s
inertia remains the same, the curve it
follows tightens too.
A body’s gravity always pulls directly
towards its centre of gravity, tightening
the curve of an orbit it swings around
that centre, or simply towards it – and it
always accelerates the object it pulls.
But depending on the details of the
encounter, its acceleration can add to or
be a brake against the orbital speed a
close-passing object already has.
It will still be in an orbit. All objects in
space are always in orbits. They can’t be
anywhere else. Its new orbit may meet
the Moon’s surface at some point and if
so, the collision’s energy will be freed in
the asteroid and about the same mass of
Moon’s surface, turning them from cool
minerals into white hot gases and
plasma in a time the asteroid would have
taken moving through its own length,
and leaving the shape of that bit of Moon
changed by expanding into as much
space, as fast as possible.
It can become really interesting, though,
if the rock’s changing orbit misses the
Moon and carries on, back out into
space. If this does happen its orbit will
have been twisted or swung around and
its speed so altered that for practical
purposes it’s a completely new orbit it
was never in before.
A spaceprobe making a close pass to a
moon or planet will be swung around it
as a natural meteor or asteroid would
be. But with steering corrections in midcourse, a spacecraft can be sent past
the planet so precisely that its orbit will
be changed exactly the way its mission
calls for. Even better, this kind of
closest-approach is just where using a
rocket engine gets the best results.
Because the rocket’s fuel, like all the
rest of the spacecraft, has swapped
potential energy for kinetic energy,
following its orbit down into a strong
gravity field, it can split this extra energy
50/50 with the craft when it leaves it as
exhaust gas. Then, since its mass has
gone, gravity can’t convert this kinetic
energy back into potential energy and so
the spacecraft keeps it, besides the
ordinary chemical (or nuclear, or ionelectric…) energy from its used fuel.
Closest approach is also the place
where a light touch of artificial
propulsion can get a whole, wide range
of results. The far stronger, natural force
of gravity is pulling an orbit through more
dramatic direction changes, quicker than
at any other time. Slight nudges in
position, heading or speed make big
differences where gravity is most
powerfully altering all three moment to
moment. It will amplify small, rocketpowered speed and direction shifts,
multiplying them up so probes like
Galileo and Cassini can explore whole
miniature solar systems of moons like
Jupiter’s and Saturn’s. By simply ekingout a few tanks full of fuel through
intelligently prepared encounters with
their close approach gravity and letting
nature do most of the work, such probes
can sweep around these moons in a
series of long loops, cruising between
each target.
down in a gravity field as you can get.
and alters its trajectory on to a new orbit (blue path). The planet’s moon,
on its own circular orbit, would also have a small effect on the path of the
comet if it was close by.
The Amor
asteroids (named
after the first one
seen) orbit
between Earth and Mars. There are
estimated to be hundreds, from dozens
of metres’ size to Ganymed, a 32 km
nugget of nickel iron mixed with silicate
rocks, and Eros, the largest, and the first
asteroid to be surveyed and landed on
by a spaceprobe (2002, NEARShoemaker). Their orbits stay outside,
but often come close to, Earth’s orbit,
but sometimes reach out well beyond
Mars – although since they’re affected
by Earth’s, Jupiter’s and Mars’s gravity,
they have some of the Solar system’s
more changeable orbits. They may soon
be part of the most interesting
combination of natural and artificial
orbital mechanics so far.
Mars Cycler craft (or stations), recently
This ‘gravitational slingshot’ approach,
making the best of rocket power by
saving it for when it will get most
advantage from working with gravity
rather than against it, has been the one
most used in human (and robot) solar
system exploration so far. In fact it’s the
only one that’s been used, since the
easiest orbits between planets (and
moons) were calculated so long ago
because these transfer orbits are really
worst-possible-case gravity slingshots;
desperate measures taken because they
have to begin at a standstill and as far
HOW IT WORKS
When human space travel has to start at
the wrong end of
the gravity
slingshot on
Earth’s surface,
Moon
Comet
anything naturally
off Earth, in an
orbit where it may
be useful, could be
vital to the project
being practical or
affordable at all.
Planet
And if Martian
exploration goes
ahead in the near
future, it may be
because it can use
materials that
natural Orbital
Mechanics has left
in place, already
travelling between
the orbits of Mars
The gravity of the planet in the centre pulls on the comet passing close by
and Earth.
proposed by Buzz Aldrin, and others,
would be permanently orbiting
habitations making regular cycles of
orbits from Earth to Mars and back.
Amor asteroids are already close to the
orbits Earth-Mars cyclers would use, but
most importantly, they already have
about the orbital energy a cycler
spacecraft would need. So in a near
future, this could be the first case of
space materials being a better and
simpler option than materials sent from
Earth. It would also be the point at which
orbital mechanics changed from being
one essential tool for planning and
navigating surveys through the Solar
system to being the deciding factor in
which should be next step in the human
exploration of Space.
Moon
Earth
Sun
The influence of Gravity. Earth’s gravity keeps our Moon in orbit around us, while
the gravity of the Sun keeps us on our own yearly path
33
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35
FUTURE SPACE
Life on Mars
by Steven Cutts
Is there life on Mars? That’s been a
hot topic for as long as we’ve viewed
the Red Planet and the answers are
hard to come by. An entire fleet of the
very latest robots has now descended
on Mars, intent on great discoveries.
And yet, if there is life on Mars, how
will we recognise it?
In looking for carbon based life forms on
Mars aren’t we guilty of planetary
chauvinism? Why should life on another
world bear any resemblance to life on
Earth? When we look for signs of
chlorophyll or DNA on Mars, surely we’re
merely projecting our own expectations
on to another planet. Isn’t this like early
European explorers arriving in a distant
foreign land and writing off the locals as
uncivilised because they didn’t speak
English?
These are difficult questions to answer,
but there’s no question that Earth based
scientists are prejudiced and do expect
alien life to resemble our own because, in
so far as we can second guess the
nature of alien life at all, we can only fall
back on our knowledge of fundamental
physics and chemistry.
As a starting point, let us assume that the
laws of both physics and chemistry are
the same throughout the
universe. The evidence to
support this view is actually
quite strong. What is there
about the environment here on
Earth that may have helped
this planet to create life?
Firstly, we know that the Earth
had as much gravity millions of
years ago as it has now. When
the world was young, volcanic
activity was probably far more
common and we know that
volcanoes emit gases into the
atmosphere. This gas
combined with other chemicals
in the fledgling atmosphere
including carbon dioxide,
sulphur dioxide, methane and
water vapour. The strong
gravitational field of the Earth
helped our planet cling to a
36
dense atmosphere and in turn, the high
surface pressures permitted the
existence of liquid water over vast areas
of land.
And it is water, more than anything else
that served as the cradle of life on this
planet. It’s not unreasonable to suggest
that water might do the same on another
world too. If you compare all the different
liquids yet identified, it turns out that
water will act as a solvent to more
chemicals than any other liquid. It was
the same million of years ago and a
fantastic number of chemicals became
dissolved in the world’s oceans. But
modern life consists of complex organic
chemicals. Where could these have
come from?
This issue remained a mystery for the
first half of the 20th century. Then, in the
1950s, a group of American scientists
performed a remarkable series of
experiments in which they tried to
recreate the early environment on Earth.
At first sight, their synthetic planet was
rather crude, essentially a glass flask half
filled with water. Above it, a small pocket
of gas contained carbon dioxide,
methane and sulphur dioxide. Next, an
electrical spark was repeatedly
transmitted through the “atmosphere” and
sometimes the flask was also exposed to
ultraviolet light. A few days later the flask
was opened and its contents examined.
To the amazement of many scientists at
the time, the fluid contained thousands of
organic molecules, including amino acids
and other essential building blocks of
modern life. That such a crude
environment could give rise to such a rich
mixture of organic chemicals so quickly
shocked the scientific world and to this
day, this is the model used to explain the
origins of life on Earth.
The world’s oceans contained the water
and above it the primordial atmosphere
was shaken by lightning storms. From
further out in space, ultra violet light
flooded down to further stimulate this
vast chemical laboratory and over many
millions of years the oceans
became filled with vast
amounts of organic molecules.
Eventually, some of these
molecules formed the basic
building blocks of life.
In areas like this on Earth where there is water and hot springs, conditions
are ideal for the growth of life, as can be seen in the different colours of
the bacteria colonies in the water
It still takes a leap of the
imagination to see how such
inert chemicals could suddenly
transform themselves into
living cells but at least some of
the material required has been
accounted for. If it still seems
chauvinistic to assume other
worlds can only have created
life the same way, it’s worth
giving some thought to the
nature of organic chemistry.
Organic molecules are based
on the carbon atom. Carbon is
a truly magic atom capable of
linking itself to other carbon
burn!) but equally a
world with liquid
water existing only
at 0 to 10 degrees
centigrade would
struggle to create
the right mix of
chemicals. Bunsen
burners have
always been good
for speeding up
chemical reactions
in a test tube and
the primordial
version of this
When this martian meteorite was first studied, it was thought that the
planet was one
objects in this image were proof of microscopic life on Mars
heck of a big test
atoms and in doing so producing
tube. Similarly, our own bodies are kept
molecules of all shapes and sizes. If we
at 37 degrees centigrade because
were to produce one example (i.e. just
everything happens much quicker like
one molecule) of each organic molecule
that!
that it is possible to make, the total mass
of such a collection would be larger than
So where does this leave the rest of the
the planet Earth! But if we gaze across
solar system? Venus has an atmosphere
the periodic table, it’s difficult to find any
but this is much too hot for any complex
other atom that is capable of establishing
chemicals to remain intact for any length
such complex chemistry and it’s even
of time. Mars has an extremely thin
harder to imagine a living creature not
atmosphere but a warm day would still be
requiring extremely complex molecules to
as cold as the poles on Earth. It’s
exist. Silicon is occasionally put forward
possible for life to exist on the polar ice
as a possible competitor to carbon and it
caps of this planet but if our theories
may well be that silicon life forms have
about evolution are correct, these life
evolved somewhere. Even so, silicon
forms evolved slowly in the comfortable
pales into insignificance in comparison to
nursery of the equatorial regions. It was
carbon.
only then, over a period of many millions
So, we’re looking for a planet with liquid
water on its surface and a carbon based
chemistry to its life forms. Liquid water
requires a minimum atmospheric density.
On the surface of the Earth, water can
exist as a liquid between 0 and 100
degrees centigrade. On top of Mount
Everest, the atmosphere is much thinner
and this means that water will boil at luke
warm temperatures. Celebrating your
ascent to the summit of Everest with a
really hot cup of tea has always been out
of the question. If an alien planet has a
thinner atmosphere than our own, it’s still
possible for water to exist on the surface
but only at lower temperatures. If life
really did appear in the Earth’s oceans it
probably appeared at the equator. Just
about all chemical reactions are
accelerated by heat and excessive heat
will break up even the staunchest of
organic chemicals (our own bodies are
made of organic chemicals – we can all
of years that more sturdy creatures
gradually evolved that could survive and
flourish in the artic niche. Starting from
scratch at such low temperatures would
be very difficult.
Its been suggested that Jupiter might
have an atmosphere that could support
some sort of exotic alien life, but the
problem is that Jupiter simply doesn’t
have a surface. It’s just one vast
atmosphere and that atmosphere is so
turbulent that even if life did begin at a
certain altitude, the fledging organisms
would soon be swept up into the freezing
stratosphere or down towards the hyper
dense, super heated core. Nothing could
survive such a journey.
So what does all this mean for Mars?
The odds are – and I’m expressing a
personal opinion here – there is no life on
Mars. The current batch of robotic probes
have been sent to exclude the possibility
FUTURE SPACE
of life on Mars, not to confirm it.
And yet, all that may be about to change.
Human beings are covered in microorganisms. Most of these tiny creatures
stay with us from the cradle to the grave
and when we die, it is this bacteria that
returns our bodies to the Earth. As soon
as the first people arrive on Mars, these
bugs will make it outside the spacecraft
and into the soil. Will any of them
survive? They certainly will and it’s
happened already. In the 1960s, NASA
landed a series of robotic probes on the
Moon and one of these was found by the
crew of Apollo 14 when they landed
within walking distance of the device. It
was too heavy to bring back but the
astronauts managed to salvage the
camera and return it to Earth. It was
analysed in detail and it soon became
It might be that the first life forms to take hold
on Mars could be micro-organisms like these,
carried there by human visitors
apparent that the probe had taken
bacteria with it and that some had
actually survived several years on the
surface of the probe. Some species had
died and none of them had flourished but
the fact that micro-organisms from Earth
could survive in the lunar environment for
any length of time at all was more than
astonishing.
Mars is a far more hospitable culture
environment than the Moon. The
extremes of temperatures are far less
severe, the soil is more inviting and there
may well be traces of water. Just as life
on Earth began with bacteria, so too, will
life on Mars. What follows will be more
sophisticated and some time soon there
will be life on Mars. It will be human life
by the look of things.
37
SCI-FI FOCUS
Smaller and Smaller
by Mat Irvine
The idea of wanting to make
yourself smaller and smaller, so
that you might even become too
small to see, is hardy new – and it
did not begin with television and
movies.
After all, there is the very famous
book, Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan
Swift in which Gulliver – besides
meeting a race of people far larger
than himself called the
Brobdingnagians – met another race
that were far smaller than himself
called the Lilliputians. The book had
such an impact on its readers that
both words have passed into the
English language – especially ‘Lilliput’
for referring to anything ‘small’.
Gulliver and Alice
Gulliver didn’t attempt to try and make
himself smaller to match the Lilliputians,
and in fact their smaller size did not
seem to affect them when it came to
capturing Gulliver and tying him down,
although they did have the strength of
numbers. This perhaps did not apply to
Alice from Alice in Wonderland, who
managed to make herself both larger
and smaller with the help of convenient
bottles marked ‘Drink Me’.
These stories made no attempt to
explain why some people were larger or
smaller, or for that matter how exactly
Alice managed to change size so easily,
(it was making other characters in the
story giddy). However, when films
began to be made that involved making
things – and especially people –
smaller, some ‘device’ had to be
invented that could conveniently explain
how this change was taking place.
Invariably this is was in the form of a
‘highly sophisticated and scientific ray’
and it was sufficient to say this had
properties that would ‘shrink’ the body
down to a small size, and would
(hopefully?) be able to return it back to
it’s normal size. Fortunately you didn’t
have to delve too deeply as exactly how
this actually worked!
38
In the 1966 movie Fantastic Voyage, submarine ‘Proteus’ waits under the miniaturisation ray device.
When its crew was on board, they were all shrunk down to the size of a blood cell and injected into
the patient.
20th Century Fox
Fantastic Voyage
The classic movie that involves
miniaturisation is Fantastic Voyage from
1966, in which the submarine Proteus
with her five-person crew is miniaturised
down to the size of a blood cell and
injected into the bloodstream of a
scientist in a coma. The objective was
to destroy a blood clot in the brain of the
scientist so he could recover and reveal
the secrets that could save the world!
As a movie it wasn’t that bad, but there
was still no real explanation as to how
one could shrink a human body – let
alone a mechanical device such as the
Proteus – down to the size of a human
body cell, because on the face of it, you
can’t.
Admittedly people come in all shapes
and sizes. Some will grow to over two
metres in height, while others stay
under one, but we are all roughly within
the same size range. This is mainly
“There was no
explanation about
how to shrink down a
human body, because
on the face of it, you
can’t”
Two potential uses for
nanotechnology (left) a micro
syringe injected into the
bloodstream to deliver medicine or
extract samples directly from the
red blood cells. (right) a microsubmarine that could be used to
repair defective tissue or find and
destroy tumour cells.
Coneyl Jay and
the Science Photo Library
because if we weren’t roughly between
one and two meters, the whole structure
of our bodies would have to change –
and we wouldn’t then be human.
Little and Large
After all, there are creatures that are far
smaller than us and others far larger,
but none of them look humanoid. If you
reduced the human shape down much
less than one metre in height, you
would start to find that our bones and
muscles would be proportionally far too
big and powerful and would likely pull
the body apart. Consequently, you
would have to develop far thinner bones
and far less powerful muscles, which
would certainly change your look.
SCI-FI FOCUS
“One company is
working on a ‘Smart
Capsule’ which would
contain operating
instruments and a
camera”
It’s also a reason why, in
general, the smaller a creature
is the shorter its lifespan – and
elephants do tend to out-live
mice. So, if we were the size of
mouse, besides dying of heat
exhaustion through all that
excess metabolism, you would
probably only live two or three years at
most!
Of course there are creatures even
smaller than mice – most insects are far
smaller. Gnats and midges are so small
that they are difficult to see with the eye
at all – they only reveal their presence
when they bite you! But these are still
much, much larger than even the
largest white cell in the human body, so
even a gnat-sized scientist would have
been no use for the Fantastic Voyage
journey.
However although miniaturisation of
humans is great in science fiction
stories and movies, when it comes to
the actual idea of miniaturisation ‘for
real’, fortunately we humans don’t have
to be involved at all. Not only that, but
you would not start with devices or
machines like the Proteus, which are
human scale and then miniaturised, you
would build them already at this
miniscule size. The idea of some highly
sophisticated ‘miniaturisation ray’
A computer concept of a medical nanorobot at work, injecting a curative or
inhibiting drug into a group of cancer cells.
Roger Harris and the Science Photo Library
On top of this your metabolism – the
way your body works – doesn’t
decrease proportionally to your size. In
fact it goes up! Watch a mouse
breathing and compare it to an elephant
(assuming you can find a convenient
one…) and you will see that the
mouse’s breathing and its heartbeats
are far faster than the elephant.
39
SCI-FI FOCUS
doesn’t come into it. It’s less fun, but
more practical…
Nanotechnology
This science was first called ‘microrobotics’, but more recently it has
generally become known as
‘nanotechnology’. ‘Nano’ is derived from
the Greek for ‘dwarf’, so it purely means
‘technology on a very small scale’, and
it can involve any technological or
engineering procedure that works at
very small sizes.
→
These days it is already possible to
make miniature machines that are small
enough to pass through the widest
human blood vessels. They were not
around in 1966 when Fantastic Voyage
was made, otherwise maybe the
scientists in the movie would have used
them instead.
Engineers and scientists at Tohoku
University in Japan have also built a tiny
machine that is eight millimetres long
and one millimetre in diameter that
could bore its way into tumours in the
body, spinning by means of a magnetic
field. It could heat up to destroy the
tumour, or a hollow version could
deliver drugs to a precise spot.
The Olympus Company is working on a
‘Smart Capsule’ which contains
operating instruments and a camera.
The current size would enable it to
travel ‘only’ through your intestines, not
blood vessels, but they are working on
that!
Electron Microscope
There is another invention that has
made this possible – the electron
microscope. One advantage the
Proteus crew would have had is that
they could actually see what they were
looking for (although their eyes would
by then have been smaller than the
wavelength of light, so how they could
see is yet another one of those
questions best left unasked…).
With nanotechnology, the scientists and
40
The arrow shows a tiny micro-cog in the palm of this hand. Such cogs are only
possible thanks to the precision of lasers
David Parker and the Science Photo Library
doctors are still full
size, so trying to
manipulate cells
(let alone
molecules and
atoms), becomes
somewhat difficult
if you cannot
actually see them.
But the electron
microscope allows
you to see this at a
‘nano’ level, and
has also allowed
mechanical
devices – cogs
and wheels – to
actually be built,
using very precise
lasers to ‘etch’ out
the parts.
The Body Helping
Itself
As the exploration
of this branch of
technology
Computer artwork depicting the possibility of using nanorobots to repair
DNA, the body’s genetic code. When this code becomes damaged, it can
lead to a number of illnesses and diseases, including cancer
Victor Habbick Visions and the Science Photo Library
SCI-FI FOCUS
purely the manipulation of the body
cells themselves, is here to stay.
Eventually it will be possible to destroy
such blood clots in the brain of a
comatose patient from the inside of his
body, though it has to be said, it is
extremely unlikely to be from a
miniaturised sub with five crew as in
Fantastic Voyage. Perhaps not the stuff
of big-screen movies, but in it’s own
way, equally exciting.
Computer artwork of a nanotechnology camera system inside the body. Each unit provides part of
the picture, like the compound image of an insect’s eye. These are then transmitted to the receiver
and reconstructed into a whole image. The small size of the cameras would allow them to view
anywhere in the body without needing an operation.
Roger Harris and the Science Photo Library
develops, it is very likely that
‘nanotechnology’ will become the notion
of manipulating the cells, or even
atoms, of the body itself rather than
building specific miniature machines.
This would be to such an extent that
these ‘machines’ ( if this is still the right
word for them) would be manufactured
out of the raw material of life.
It is after all only what the body is doing
all the time. In effect, the body is one
mass of ‘nanotechnology’ on a cellsized level, keeping your body working
normally. Cells are constantly repairing
themselves and their contents;
manufacturing new ones and repelling
invading cells.
Maybe nanotechnology will solely
become the term for ‘helping the body
to help itself’, but this idea of artificially
moving body cells around and making
new ones at this tiny level has also
bought in a term which itself has led to
much discussion – and not a little
consternation – the term ‘grey goo’!
July 2004 when he voiced concern that
further research into nanotechnology
could produce a medical disaster in the
style that the drug thalidomide caused
in the 1960s.
However, the term was first used nearly
20 years before, way back in 1986,
when the idea of micro-robotics was just
starting development. It was voiced by
scientist Eric Drexler in his book ‘The
Engines of Creation’, wondering at that
time if the uncontrolled development of
tiny nanotechnology robots – he then
called them ‘nanobots’ – could get out
of control. Everything could then be
converted into ‘grey goo’ in the sense of
taking over a specific niche in nature
and, frankly, not being very useful or
interesting, rather like a ‘robotic weed’
(although he also pointed out that they
need not be ‘grey’ or ‘gooey’!)
As with most far-reaching statements,
some people come down on one side,
some on the other, though it is fair to
say that the vast majority of scientists
don’t agree with the idea of ‘grey goo’.
“Nanotechnology
may come to mean
‘helping the body
to help itself’.”
Stories – books, TV and film –
where miniaturisation plays an
important part:
Gulliver’s Travels - Jonathan Swift
(novel and a TV series)
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
- Lewis Carroll (novel and several
TV series)
The Borrowers - Mary Norton
(novel; TV series and movie)
The Incredible Shrinking Man
(movie 1957)
Fantastic Voyage - movie 1966
(and Isaac Asimov novelisation,
1966)
Fantastic Voyage II : Destination
Brain - Isaac Asimov (novel 1988)
Innerspace (movie 1987)
Honey, I Shrunk the Kids (movie
1989)
Grey Goo
The term is now usually associated with
a speech the Prince of Wales made in
In all, it would seem that
nanotechnology, initially in the form of
these micro-robots and then maybe
Land of the Giants (Irwin Allen TV
series)
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SOLUTIONS
GRID WORD PAGE 12
A
U
R
O
R
A
S
P
G
A
L
L
A
I
N
L
E
E
THE ANSWERS TO THE
CLUES ARE:
T
A
R
R A
D
A
R
B
U
L A
R
C
U R
T
O
N E
P
L
U
T
O
M E
G
A
L
A
X
1. Mercury
2. Galileo
3. Galaxy
4. Aurora
5. Pluto
6. Star
7. Radar
8. Planet
9. Nebula
Y
Fit the words into the grid as
shown and you can make the
word ASTRONOMY reading
down the middle
Y
WORD PAIRS
The correct pairings are shown below. How many did you get right?
Saturn
Titan and the Rings
Johannes
Kepler
Jupiter
The one with the Great Red Spot
Isaac
Newton
Pluto
The little planet found in 1930
Tycho
Brahe
Mars
The Red Planet
Nicolaus
Copernicus
Earth
The Blue Planet teeming with life
Galileo
Galilei
Venus
The Morning or Evening Star
Clyde
Tombaugh
William
Herschel
Mercury
Fast moving planet nearest the Sun
Percival
Lowell
Neptune
Named after the ruler of the sea
Edmond
Halley
Uranus
The Tilted Planet
Giovanni
Schiaparelli
The Sun
The star in our Solar System
Edwin
Hubble
The Moon
Our only natural satellite
John
Flamsteed
Asteroid Belt
Chunks of Rock
Big Bang
Put the Clocks Forward
Current belief is that the universe started with a ‘big bang’
about 14 billion years ago. To give you an idea of how long
that is, imagine all the events in the universe condensed
into one day. Earth wouldn’t be around until late afternoon
and the whole of human history would only take up the last
two seconds of the day!
The Earth’s day, which is the time it takes to spin a
complete revolution about its axis, is 24 hours long. But the
influence of our Moon is slowing us down and is gradually
making the day longer. Eventually, we might have to make
clocks that have 25 hours on them - in about another 200
million years!
42
SOLUTIONS
GIANT WORD SEARCH PAGE 31
E
L
B
B
U
H
S
I
L
A
E
R
O
B
A
N
O
R
O
C
T
A
G
E
V
D
H
T
E
A
B
U
R
S
A
M
A
J
O
R
N
R
D
H
I
R
G
A
H
I
C
K
T
E
I
N
I
M
E
G
C
A
P
E
G
A
S
U
S
E
R
E
X
N
Y
L
A
S
S
R
O
A
W
R
M
C
H
R
L
P
U
P
R
S
T
B
U
E
E
E
P
S
N
S
T
O
E
U
Y
O
X
L
A
T
E
R
R
L
C
A
E
R
O
C
I
S
R
S
R
I
S
E
I
R
A
A
I
A
S
T
R
Y
I
H
E
O
C
D
A
S
S
R
E
R
P
H
G
H
I
B
N
M
R
E
E
R
U
C
N
S
I
N
I
P
A
E
A
T
P
E
I
E
O
L
R
L
L
U
B
A
I
S
I
L
A
L
I
U
Q
A
C
L
W
B
E
N
E
D
U
C
T
S
L
O
T
H
E
U
N
R
U
O
E
T
A
R
S
E
E
O
S
E
R
U
T
P
U
R
O
X
S
T
B
O
O
T
E
S
T
I
Y
M
A
G
A
L
I
L
E
O
A
P
C
E
N
N
T
L
M
A
U
R
T
H
E
L
E
G
I
R
L
S
N
A
T
X
E
S
O
V
A
P
S
U
N
G
Y
C
N
I
S
U
E
S
R
E
P
E
R
A
T
O
S
T
H
E
N
E
S
U
S
N
E
G
Y
U
H
S
N
E
P
R
E
S
A
G
I
T
T
A
UNLUCKY 13
35 years ago on April 11, 1970, NASA launched Apollo 13 to the Moon. The mission suffered an in-flight explosion but the
crew survived and were returned safely to Earth. But if you ever thought the number 13 was unlucky, spare a thought for the
three astronauts of Apollo 13 - James Lovell, Fred Haise and Jack Swigert:
•
•
•
•
Launch time was 13:13 hours local time from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida
The launch pad was 39A (which is also 3 x 13)
The explosion in the spacecraft took place on April 13
The original Command Module pilot Ken Mattingly was grounded and replaced by Swigert because he was thought to have
caught German Measles (German Measles has 13 letters)
• The first names of the crew, Jack, Fred and James have a total of 13 letters
These ‘13s’ weren’t the only thing to happen to the mission:
• One of the five main engines of their rocket failed during launch but they made it into orbit ok. They thought that this was
the piece of bad luck that they were expecting on this mission, but they were wrong.
• Jim Lovell’s wife Marilyn lost her wedding ring down the plug hole of the shower the day before the launch
• The crew was supposed to have flown Apollo 14 but were changed when the original Apollo 13 crew needed more training
time. Lovell thought he would get to walk on the Moon sooner, but he never landed at all.
43
RE-ENTRY:
A look back at significant moments in space history
FINDING PLUTO
Seventy-five years ago, on
February 18, 1930, American
astronomer Clyde Tombaugh
ended a long search to discover
a suspected ninth planet in our
solar system by finding the little
world we call Pluto.
Hunt the Planet
The search for Pluto began twentyfive years earlier, before
Tombaugh was even born. Percival
Lowell, another American
astronomer, had been studying the
known outer planets Uranus and
Neptune and calculated that
something was disturbing the orbit
of Uranus. He reasoned that it
must be the influence of another
planet and the search for it began.
When Tombaugh joined the staff of
the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff
in Arizona, he took up the search.
studied images of the stars for over
ten months and suddenly noticed
that one tiny dot among the
thousands had moved quite a
distance from one picture to the
next. This was too far and too fast
to be anything other than a planet,
and Pluto was discovered.
Clyde Tombaugh
The Maths was Wrong
The calculations that the search
was based upon were actually
wrong, but it wasn’t until much later
that this was known. Pluto is far
too small to have a noticable effect
on the two bigger planets, but
amazingly, a careful search of the
sky by Tombaugh turned up Pluto
anyway. He had painstakingly
Tombaugh was born on February
4, 1906 and built his first telescope
at the age of 20 with only limited
knowledge of how to do it. He soon
learned and built many more
throughout his life. He used one of
them, a nine-inch telescope, to
make detailed drawings of the
markings he had observed on Mars
and Jupiter and in 1928 he sent
these drawings in to the Lowell
Observatory. They were impressed
with the detailed and careful
observation he had shown and
invited him to the Observatory to
work.
Tombaugh had never had any
formal science education and
taught himself geometry and
trigonometry and learned about the
stars through his home made
telescopes. It wasn’t until 1932,
two years after he made history by
discovering Pluto, that he could
finally afford to go to college and
gain his qualifications.
Tombaugh died in January 1997,
just two weeks short of his 91st
birthday.
Little Wanderer
Mythology
Pluto is the smallest planet in our solar system, about
two-thirds the size of our Moon. It takes about 248
years to go around the Sun and it’s the only planet in
our solar system that we’ve never sent a spacecraft to.
It’s very difficult to see even with the biggest Earthbased telescopes and not even the Hubble Space
Telescope has been able to give us a really clear
picture yet. Trying to view Pluto from Earth is a bit like
trying to read the print on a golf ball from about thirty
miles away!
Pluto was named after the Roman god of the underworld,
probably because it is so far from the sun that it is in
perpetual darkness.
44
In mythology, Pluto assisted his brothers Jupiter and
Neptune to defeat their father, Saturn. They shared the
world, with Jupiter choosing the earth and the heavens,
Neptune ruling the sea and Pluto receiving the lower world
to rule over the shades of the dead. These shades were
ferried to him across the river Styx by the boatman Charon,
which is why Pluto’s only moon was given that name.
WHERE TO GO
This map of the UK is going to build into a guide to all the places that you can go to experience space and science
displays, shows or interactive days out. It only has a few entries at the moment, so we’d like your help to fill it up. If
you or your school have been to a science centre near you, tell us about it and we’ll add it to the map.
If you are a space or science centre, we want to let people know you are there, so send us some details about your
centre to let schools and students know what you do. We will be featuring different centres in future issues.
Aberdeen: Satrosphere
01224 640340 www.satrosphere.net
Glasgow: Glasgow Science Centre
0141 420 5000 www.gsc.org.uk
Edinburgh: Royal Observatory
Macclesfield: Jodrell Bank
0131 668 8405 www.roe.ac.uk/vc
01477 571 339 www.jb.man.ac.uk/scicen
Newcastle: Discovery Museum
0121 232 6789 www.twmuseums.org.uk/discovery
Armagh: Armagh Planetarium
028 3752 3689
Halifax: Eureka! the Museum for Children
wwwarmaghplanet.com
01422 330 069 www.eureka.org.uk
Leicester: National Space Centre
0870 607 7223 www.spacecentre.co.uk
Birmingham:
Thinktank at Millennium Point
0121 202 2222 www.thinktank.ac
Norwich: Inspire
01603 612612
Oxford: Curioxity
www.science-project.org/inspire
01865 247004 www.oxtrust.org.uk/curioxity
Cardiff: Techniquest
02920 475 475 www.techniquest.org
Hailsham: Observatory Science Centre
01323 832731 www.the-observatory.org
Bristol: At-Bristol
0845 345 1235
Weymouth: Discovery
www.at-bristol.org.uk
01305 789 007
www.discoverdiscovery.co.uk
34
London: London Planetarium
0870 400 3010 www.london-planetarium.com