Wondering about wonders of the night sky

I said to my 5 year old son a few clear nights ago, "Get your coat and shoes on and come and see Jupiter through the telescope." This was met with some enthusiasm.

It was a cold, clear night and Jupiter and the Moon were to the south and I set the small scope up on my driveway with my son prancing around me happily. I found the Moon first so I could align the finderscope and then after a little fiddling with screws, I called him to have a look. He continued prancing for another minute or so and then came over.

"Oooh! That's very bright" he said. The moon is very bright through even a small telescope.

Then I swiveled it onto Jupiter. I could see the disk, faint banding and three of the four Galilean moons. I then called my son over again and he looked through the eyepiece.

"But that's rubbish!" he said.

Clearly he expected this

 

but got this

He listened quietly to my attempt at explaining what he was seeing, but seemed unconvinced. I hope my few words lodged somewhere in his mind.

The next night I was doing something similar with a telescope with an evening class at Glasgow University observatory. There was much less prancing around. They were very impressed by the Moon, pleased and interested at Jupiter but disappointed by the smudge that was the Andromeda galaxy. Of course, when you explain that the smudge is a galaxy of several hundred billion stars and that the light they just saw left those stars over 2 million years ago, then that smudge takes on a new significance.

We were also treated to a meteor, a couple of satellites and for a moment we were all perplexed by a strange, flickering orange "star" drifting across the sky to the north. After a bit of theorising, we concluded it was a chinese lantern, which we then confirmed with binoculars and a fleeting glimpse as it zipped across the telescope's field of view.

The night sky is beautiful to the naked eye, but it has an even deeper beauty that can only be appreciated with your mind.

More on Ancient Egypt in Glasgow

Since writing, I've run my hands-on session with my Art students (which went wonderfully well - lots of good photos taken of them looking at objects with such enthusiasm and reverence), and I've run another session where I took my students to the Hunterian Stores - a dark corner of Glasgow on Thurso Street - to look at facsimile paintings of scenes from Theban tombs made by the Rev Colin Campbell, a Glasgow University alumnus, at the turn of the 20th century.

The idea for the Campbell session was to unroll (in the manner of 19th century Egyptologists unwrapping mummies!) the paintings - some of which are over 3m long - and to re-create a tomb space for my students, with all its paintings intact in glorious colour. Of course, we only managed to look at 3 paintings - the time absolutely flew! We got so carried away picking out details and pondering the reasons behind them (e.g. why show a sleepy servant dozing under a tree when everyone around him is busily at work enduring provision for the tomb owner's afterlife?)!

I hope these kinds of sessions will just be the beginning. Sally-Anne Coupar, who curates the Egyptian collection in the Hunterian, has been absolutely wonderful. She firmly believes that the collection should be used to inspire students, which means giving them access rather than having objects hidden away. Another session on the Campbell paintings is planned for the Egyptology Scotland society, who've very generously contributed towards the Campbell paintings conservation fund.

Of course, nothing beats the experience of perusing scenes on tomb walls when you're actually in Egypt in the actual tomb... Although, there's something to be said for being able to get up close and personal with the scenes without feeling that you're slowly melting in the Egyptian dry heat (usually when I'm in the country, it's September, so it's in the mid to high thirties in Luxor...).

These sessions are supposed to inspire my students. They certainly do. Funny thing is - they inspire me too, which is especially important during these turbulent times for teachers.

Aimee Mann

I've been mulling over the implications of the internet for the ownership of knowledge and expertise, and the question of where people like ourselves fit into the big flows of these quantities (can we even speak about them in such terms?) across societal groupings in the light of these new media. Mulling so much I'm not sure what to say that can be spat out in a little blog. Need to mull some more. Or produce a long series of them. Or defer to cleverer people.

So let me just for now share this, possibly surprising news to those who hear the fearsome sounds that sometimes accompany my work in room 406, that this evening I am enjoying very much Aimee Mann's "Bachelor No 2", songs full of darkness, passion and intensity that comes across in the finely and carefully crafted words and the measured arrangements and is only enhanced by the understatement of the singing; strategies for lasting effect. Potent.

Normal service resumed soon.

X-rays

Today is the 115th aniversary of the discovery of X-rays. I've spent a lot of time studying X-rays from cosmic objects (particularly the Sun) so maybe I should have been aware of this particular anniversary; but I wasn't. Google stuck it under my nose, however, in today's eye-catching Google doodle. I'm always interested in bones, graveyards, old keys to crypts best left unvisited, etc. and that's how it caught my eye, but that's not what it announces at all. "X-rays" is a better topic, much more interesting because real.

I'm also thinking, "what a brilliant way to gently push a scientific topic under the noses of millions." What's more, it's generated further coverage and more words on X-rays (doesn't mention, though, that X-rays are one more form of light, not perceived by our eyes but ultimately the same sort of phenomenon as radio, infra-red, visible, ultra-violet...).

I always feel the most valuable things we do, in adult education, involve meeting people who would never have chosen to come anywhere near us. I guess most internet users use Google for something most days. Today when they click on that funny, gothic-looking picture millions of people potentially are being led to think and learn about a physics topic, one they might never have gone near otherwise. Well done, Google!