BBC Astronomer Misses Meteor During Live Show

krou writes "BBC astronomer Mark Thompson wasn't having a good night for the BBC's Stargazing Live show. He turned to the camera to complain of poor cloud visibility and a lack of activity in the sky ... only for a meteor to shoot past in the background. A rather sheepish Thompson said, 'I must admit I was oblivious to it. I think I'm probably the only person in the entire country who didn't see it.' (YouTube video of the original live footage)."

Comments

And this is news?

[Kokuyo]

It wasn't even a stupid mistake on his part. This is like someone blinking just when someone else is taking a picture. Bad timing. Is this truly newsworthy?

Re:And this is news?

[Carnivorous Vulgaris]

I knew somebody who blinked in around 95% of photos. Even a fake count-down didn't throw them off.

Re:And this is news?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow! Ok, that IS news.

Re:And this is news?

[MichaelSmith]

I think its pretty amazing that it was possible to see a meteor in the UK.

Re:And this is news?

[sglow]

I knew somebody who blinked in around 95% of photos. Even a fake count-down didn't throw them off.

Actually, that's fairly common. Most camera's use a short pre-flash to adjust their light levels when you press the shutter button. This is followed a few milliseconds later by the actual flash used to take the picture. Some people with sensitive eyes will blink at the pre-flash and end up with their eyes closed in most flash pictures.

I used to have a Nikon DSLR camera that could be programmed to emit the pre-flash when a certain button was pressed. I'd hit the pre-flash button first, then take the actual picture (sans pre-flash) a few seconds later. Worked miracles for my wife who is a blinker.

My new camera (a newer Nikon DSLR) doesn't see to make people blink, so either it doesn't use a pre-flash, or it's so fast that there's no time for people to react.

Wow, live stargazing is a TV show in England?

[Dr. Spork]

Does the BBC also have a "live watching paint dry" show?

Re:Wow, live stargazing is a TV show in England?

[Kentari]

It's better TV than Big Brother, *-ian Idol, ... and all the other junk... That said, I didn't watch either. I prefer the real deal.

Re:Wow, live stargazing is a TV show in England?

[Dr. Spork]

Look, I love astronomy far more than the average person, but live stargazing - especially in cloudy England - is just about the dullest thing I can think of to bring out what's interesting in the field. As the ancients noted, the stars basically do nothing if you watch them live. They admired this "permanence" and its contrast with the wanderings of the planets and the transience of events on Earth. But that's exactly why there is no point is watching the stars "live"!

Re:Wow, live stargazing is a TV show in England?

[krou]

Absolutely loved Brian Cox's "Wonders of the Solar System". Personally, would prefer the Beeb spent their cash on that, rather than shows like this ...

Re:Wow, live stargazing is a TV show in England?

[digitig]

And also in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, too. The B in BBC is "British", not "English", dear.

Northern Ireland is not in Great Britain (although the BBC does serve the folks there). If you're going to be pedantic, do it right.

Re:Wow, live stargazing is a TV show in England?

[Stooshie]

Yeh, Flamsteed, Airy, Halley, Moore, Lassell, Hawking, Newton, Herschel, Cox, ... Britain is rubbish for astronomy and all that dull space stuff. Don't know why we British bother, to be honest!

Re:Wow, live stargazing is a TV show in England?

[mykdavies]

Look, I love astronomy far more than the average person, but live stargazing - especially in cloudy England - is just about the dullest thing I can think of to bring out what's interesting in the field.

I don't understand why think that the producers of this series of hour-long programmes wouldn't have the same concerns, and ensured that the programmes were not dull?

I watched the first programme. It was presented by well-known physicist/presenter Brian Cox and comedian Dara O'Briain (who has a degree in theoretical physics and does a great routine debunking alternative medicine). They presented a live segment from Jodrell Bank which explained how radio telescopes work and Jodrell Bank's key role in the development of that field. They had a live report from the observatories in Hawaii, explaining what made that such a great location for telescopy, and also looking at how the islands were formed, reminding us about planetary formation and make-up. They took Jonathan Ross (a geeky presenter/celeb) out into a back-yard observatory, aimed the telescope and showed him Jupiter and its four visible moons). They explained the layout of the solar system, and the rotations of the planets, and pointed out that Uranus was currently in conjunction with Jupiter, and how to see it for yourself. They also answered questions that were being texted in by viewers (including a great one: "If there are so many billions of stars, how come it's so dark at night?").

Admittedly not all of this needed to be done live, but doing so gave them a hook to build up a lot of publicity about the programme, and it meant that the energy of the programme was very high, with very appealing and natural approaches by the presenters.

Re:Wow, live stargazing is a TV show in England?

[JasterBobaMereel]

Stargazing, over three nights when there was A partial Lunar Eclipse, A meteor shower, a guide to how to use a telescope and how to navigate around the sky, and reports and interviews from Mauna Kea ....

One small part of this (very small due to the unsurprising cloudy conditions) was this astronomer stargazing live .... which was joked about by the presenters because they knew there was total cloud cover on two of the nights ...

Re:Wow, live stargazing is a TV show in England?

[Idarubicin]

Yeh, Flamsteed, Airy, Halley, Moore, Lassell, Hawking, Newton, Herschel, Cox, ... Britain is rubbish for astronomy and all that dull space stuff. Don't know why we British bother, to be honest!

The reason why Newton invented calculus, optics, and the theory of gravitation was to have something to do on all those cloudy nights with rubbish observing. Flamsteed, meanwhile, spent his cloudy nights getting into political fights with Newton, and burning his books in front of the Royal Society during an authorship dispute. Halley headed for Saint Helena's clear skies and warm weather as soon as he graduated from Oxford; when he got back to England he mucked about with building diving bells to pass the time on his cloudy evenings.

Hawking never did any observational astronomy, nor did Cox. Lassell built an observatory in Malta as soon as he could afford to. Herschel composed twenty-four symphonies during his overcast nights.

If there's one conclusion to be drawn, it's that a British astronomer is a frustrated astronomer.

Sowat?

[EEDAm]

He didn't turn round to the camera, he was facing the camera ready to deliver his lines on a live link. And so a meteor appears behind him with his back turned. So frigging what? There's no miss and no mistake, just a bloke looking the other way as he must to do his job. And the clouds are clearly visible in the video as well. Non-article in extremis.

Re:Sowat?

[CrackedButter]

What's important is that WE saw it :-).

Also they were using imagine intensifiers

[Viol8]

... so even if he had been facing it it wouldn't have been nearly as bright to his eyes as it was on the camera. In fact it might have been too dim to see at all with the naked eye.

Wha?

[dutchd00d]

What a stupid summary. The guy was facing the camera, and the meteor appeared behind his back. Are we expecting astronomers to have eyes in the back of their head now?

Slashdot confirms it

[Mathness]

Must be some really nice stuff the editors are smoking for this to pass as front page material.

Would this have been visible without Night Vision?

[dovf]

Anyone who's ever gone looking for meteors knows the feeling: the people you're with see a great one just as you were looking the other way --- it's almost part of the fun ;) --- so I agree that I don't find this very newsworthy... However, I'm also wondering how much the fact that this was being shot with a Night Vision camera (as the caption on the bottom left seems to imply?) would have affected the visibility of the meteor; in other words, even if the reporter had been looking straight at the meteor, would he have seen it with the naked eye?

Daily Mail is moronic

[Phil Hands]

The last time I had the misfortune to have my brain polluted by a Daily Mail story was when sitting bored in a physio's waiting room.

Flipping the rag open at random, I see a headline something like:

    87% of Britons now members of a persecuted minority

this little nugget of wisdom had apparently been assembled by taking the percentages of various "minorities" and adding them all together.

The groups included:

    51% Women

*cough* minority?

and then:

    12% Single Mothers

[SubEd Are you sure we can simply add that number to the Women?] [Ed: yeah, no problem]

Re:Daily Mail is moronic

[jo_ham]

Even more amusing is the fact that single mothers are persecuted *by* the Daily Mail mostly.

Missing the Meteor shower

[vgerclover]

He'll have a fighting chance against Triffids then?

In Soviet Russia

[wideBlueSkies]

Meteor misses you.

Unless of course you're in Siberia and it's 1908.