July 2012

JULY 2012 ISSUE

Majorca Trip 2012 Majorca Trip 2012 Majorca Trip 2012 Majorca Trip 2012 ---- Page 8Page 8Page 8Page 8

Cheltenham Science Festival 2012

Page 6

Page 6

Page 6

Page 6----7777

RAL Field Trip RAL Field Trip RAL Field Trip RAL Field Trip ---- Page 9 Page 9 Page 9 Page 9

Pages 4Pages 4Pages 4Pages 4----5555

THE SKY AT NIGHT

PAGES 8-9

Editor: Chloe Partridge

Copy Editor: Martin Griffiths

Contributors: Chloe Partridge, Louisa Connolly, Kate

Middleton.

Columnists: Phill Wallace, Martin Griffiths

If you would like to contribute in any way, either by send-

ing us your Faulkes images, or perhaps even writing an

article, then get in touch, we would love to hear from you.

Editorial Contacts :

[email protected]

[email protected]

IMAGE REFERENCES:

PG 4-5. Clock face - www.wired.com

PG 6-7. John Ellis - ftpi.umn.edu, Helen Czerski– Twitter, Shawn Domagal-Goldman- researchpages.net, Litmus- design-

science.org.uk

PG 8-9. Night Sky - Heavensabove.com, Moon& Brecons - Martin Griffiths

PG 10.Photography by Kate Middleton and Gien

PG 11. RAL - www.stfc.ac.uk , Earth’s magnetic field - www.newscientist.com, Solar Weather - solarb.msfc.nasa.gov

PG 12. Max Planck-Wiki commons

EDITORIAL

So, we have reached the last issue of the academic year and I

would like to thank everyone who has been involved in making

the first ever Astronomy magazine at Glamorgan! I would

especially like to thank our columnists Martin Griffiths and Phil

Wallace who have tirelessly contributed every month since

that magazine started – one gold star each! No doubt next

year’s issues will be jam packed with even more fascinating

articles by them and other writer. I already know we can look

forward to some good expo’s on the Higgs.

To conclude however, this month we have tried to summarise

and highlight some of the best bits of the year so far - from

trips to events, which have taken place across the country -

so we can go out with a Bang!

Hopefully your summers are filled with lots of fun , Astronomy

related activities which can hear about in September.

Enjoy the rest of your summer,

Clo

Carl Sagan has also been receiving quite a few ‘likes’ on the threads this year, and

has become somewhat of an Icon on our page - No surprise really.

Our Book of Faces group has been buzzing this year with loads of posts and feeds from our students from the world

of science media, as well as the odd funny picture that has arisen from some archive: My favourite this year being

the Oreo Moon phases. Us geeks know how to rock it when it comes to nerdy humour !

J U L Y 2 0 1 2 I S S U E

GLMAORGAN

ASTRONOMY

C O S M O L O G I C A L N E W S

8 - 9 . T H E N I G H T S K Y I N J U L Y .

T H I S M O N T H W E C O N C E N T R A T E O N T H E L O S S O F O U R N I G H T S K Y T O T H E I N S I D I O U S E F F E C T S O F L I G H T P O L L U -T I O N . T H I S I S A P R O B L E M W E C A N A L L D O S O M E T H I N G

A B O U T .

4 - 5 . T H E P E R I L S O F T I M E T R A V E L .

T I M E T R A V E L I S A H I G H L Y A T T R A C T I V E P R O S P E C T T O M A N Y O F U S . T H E C H A N C E T O M E E T L E G E N D S F A C E T O F A C E A N D S E E H I S T O R Y B E I N G M A D E . B U T I T I S A L S O R I D D L E D W I T H

T E R R I B L E D A N G E R S .

6 - 7 . T H E T I M E S C H E L T E N H A M S C I E N C E

F E S T I V A L .

A S U M M A R Y O F S O M E T H E B E S T B I T S O F T H E 2 0 1 2 C H E L T E N H A M

S C I E N C E F E S T I V A L .

1 0 . M A J O R C A T R I P 2 0 1 2 .

T H E F I R S T Y E A R A S TR O N O M Y S T U D E N T S P A R T I C I P A T E I N A O N E W E E K T R I P T O M A J O R C A T O W O R K I N S P A I N ' S M O S T E A S T E R N

O B S E R V A T O R Y .

1 0

1 1 . T R I P T O R A L 2 0 1 2 .

T H I S Y E A R S F I E L D T R I P T O T H E R U T H E R F O R D – A P P L E T O N L A B - F I R S T H A N D O P E R T U N I T Y T O O B S E R V E A N D H E A R

A B O U T C U R R E N T R E A S R C H .

4 - 5

8 - 9

1 1

6 - 7

Page 4 C O S M O L O G I C A L N E W S

As regular readers will know, I have something

of a fondness for catastrophe. We started with

atom bombs, then the Apocalypse, so now I feel

we can move on to something even worse: the

annihilation of not just the human race, but it’s

very erasure from history. Yes, I’m talking

about Time Travel. More specifically, the dan-

gers that careless time travel can cause and

how easy it might be for some moron with a

time capsule to erase all life as we know it. This

is the bottom line; Time Travel is obscenely

dangerous!

We all know the dream. You’ve finished your

greatest invention and decide to sample Histo-

ries’ delights. The Fall of Troy, the Battle of

Trafalgar, Jimi Hendrix in concert. But Time

Travel packs a dangerous set of problems that

you need to be wary of.

First, let’s look at the two basic models of time

travel. Model number one: A single, fixed time-

line. Once something has happened it cannot be

changed. This might sound safe, but it contains

its own share of terrifying possibilities. To ex-

pand upon the basic model, the supposition is

that time travellers will not be able to change

history as they know it. So, no going back and

killing Hitler unfortunately.

There are two variations to this model however.

The first is that some kind of TimeCop or cos-

mic censor stops time travel from messing with

history. The sniper lining up to blow away Hitler

will find his rifle jams, or he gets discovered by

the Gestapo, or he misses, or Jean Claude van

Damm turns up and drags him back to the fu-

ture. Suffice to say, it’s impossible to mess with

the past. This is a version that is safe from

paradoxes and universe-ending side effects,

luckily.

The second variation is more of a problem. It

states that any time traveller seeking to pre-

vent or alter a historical event will instead wind

up causing that event to happen. To use the

Hitler example; we go back in time to kill Hitler

as a child, but the attempt fails and traumatizes

the young boy, turning him in to the monster

that history remembers. Now that’s a problem.

Not least because you could trace all of the

suffering Hitler caused to the actions of that

one time traveller. You would be directly re-

sponsible for millions of deaths. Which is bound

to land you in some legal trouble if you return.

It also leads us to one of the nastier paradoxes

that occurs. Let’s take a nicer example. You are

a big Shakespeare fan, and go back in time to

meet the Great Bard, taking with you a copy of

his completed works as a gift. However, you

unknowingly make a cock-up and wind up meet-

ing old Will before he’s finished writing, say,

Hamlet. Seeing him struggling, you give him the

book to serve as inspiration. Will, being an op-

portunistic git, simply copies the play verbatim

from the book.

The paradox arises from the question: “If

Shakespeare copied his plays from a book of

his plays brought from the future, who actually

wrote them?” It’s a good one. That book is a

record of the original play that is a copy of the

book. It’s become a time loop. This is known

affectionately as “the free lunch paradox” as

history gets something for nothing. It’s the time

travel and intellectual version of a perpetual-

motion machine.

Page 5 J U L Y 2 0 1 2 I S S U E

B Y P H I L W A L L A C E

This model of Time Travel also leads to the

bizarre problem with changing bad events.

Would the event have happened if you hadn’t

tried to change it? The answer is: most likely

not. But since it has happened, someone has to

go back and make it happen. Keep thinking

along those lines and you’ll get a nasty head-

ache. This single-timeline model, while not

being free of paradoxes and perils

(predestination paradoxes are a real pain; you

go back and change something, and that

change is the reason you went back in the first

place) it does at least have safeguards that

stop Humanity being erased.

The second model is much more problematic.

In basic terms: Time is fluid and can be

changed with ease, as easily as stepping off a

pavement or sneezing. Yes, it’s the good old

Butterfly Effect. And although some may scoff

it actually makes sense. You arrival in the past

will displace air, which pushes more air. This

makes a small breeze with enough force to

rustle the trees, which startles a small animal,

making it dart out of a hunter’s sights. The

hunter then changes target and nails some-

thing else. Boom, history has changed, but (I

hear you say) in a tiny way. But…suppose that

this new animal is harder to kill, making the

hunter leave later. He’s driving home but the

traffic is different and he’s tired from a longer

than planned day. He doesn’t see that cyclist

coming out of the side road and bam,

someone’s dead. That’s a BIG change to histo-

ry, and all because you just arrived in the past.

That’s an extreme example, so let’s go for the

ultimate one. You go back in time to meet your

grandfather, who died before you were born

so you only have stories of him. You meet him

as planned and you get chatting, and eventual-

ly get so engrossed in talking that he misses

his train; the same train that he coincidentally

met your grandmother on. Your grandparents

never meet, your father is never born and

neither are you. Congratulations, you’ve just

wiped out your own timeline.

Or even worse, you go back in time to stop

yourself making a mistake a decade ago. You

get into an argument with your younger self

(who, naturally, considers whatever choice

you made a brilliant idea, no matter how dumb

it is in retrospect) and in a fit of rage, you

punch yourself in the face (time travel even

messes with grammar and pronouns, that’s

how bad it is!). Your younger self falls awk-

wardly and smacks his head on a desk, killing

him and negating your history. Somehow you

just committed both manslaughter and suicide

and no longer exist. But if you don’t exist, you

can’t have killed your younger self, so you do

exist to go back and kill yourself and so on.

A weirder version is one shown in Futurama. In

an attempt to stop himself from killing his

grandfather while in the past, Fry hustles the

man to “safety” in an isolated house, which

happens to be on a nuclear testing range. Fry

doesn’t disappear, making him realise the man

wasn’t his ancestor. Consequently he has no

problem with comforting the dead man’s wid-

ow. Fry winds up sleeping with her and conse-

quently becoming his own grandfather. Now

that is bound to make family reunions awk-

ward. Plus it also would make you horribly

inbred.

The grand-slam version of this problem though

is that you travel far enough back in time that

your slight change makes Humanity never

evolve. Suppose you went back in time to a

beach and saw a weird-looking fish struggling

on the sand. In a fit of kindness you throw the

fish back into the sea. Well done, you just

stopped the first creature crawling on to land

and mammalian life, let alone Homo Sapiens,

never evolves.

There’s one final pitfall that seems to crop up

time and again. It’s called Godwin’s Law of

Time Travel. Basically: “As the amount of time-

traveling you do increases, the probability of

Hitler winning World War II approaches one.”

In other words, every Time Travel adventure

gives Hitler another chance to win. Even the

slightest change could irrevocably alter the

future and make it something far worse. In-

deed, in fiction, it is usually the case that time

travel results in a Nazi triumph.

So then, between paradoxes, killing your an-

cestors in an eternal loop and, by the way,

letting Hitler win WW2 over and over again, you

have a whole heap of problems. Simplest an-

swer to these problems? Don’t use your fancy

new time machine. Destroy it. Destroy all de-

tails of it. Better yet, don’t build it in the first

place. Just don’t decide to go back and stop

yourself building it…

Page 6 C O S M O L O G I C A L N E W S

The Times Cheltenham

Science Festival 2012

Science question time was a daily

event which took the hot topics of the

day and allowed an audience to debate

and discuss their opinions on such

matters—sometimes controversial.

SCIENCE QUESTION TIME

The Eureka editor, Giles Whittell, invit-

ed the public to come and share their

ideas about what they thought might

make a great feature article – the

best idea being published in the Octo-

ber edition.

EUREKA LIVE

The Cotswold Astronomical society

created an evening event where the

public could come and learn about

the night sky , and offered the chance

to observe late in the evening when

the stars came out.

STAR GAZING LIVE

The Cheltenham Science Festival is an annual event that has grown over the past few years . It is one of the leading science festivals in the

UK, and this years festival theme was Generation. A whole host of guests spoke on topics, covering everything from renewable energy, medi-

cal advances, the changing climate to new technologies . The talks and events aimed to inspire and engage people of all ages, in an exciting

environment which allowed them to enter into discussion on topics that effect us now only now, but in the future.

John Ellis: Physicist

Hunt for Higgs– An excellent talk

summarising subatomic particles

which make up the Universe and

the Higgs place in it.

Helen Czerski: Physicist and

Earths Journey - An epic explo-

ration of the Earths changes over

a year as its orbits our Sun.

Alien Hunters- An explanation of

how life outside our universe is

being detected and of the question

Are we really alone?

Shawn Domagal-Goldman:

Astrobiologist

J U L Y 2 0 1 2 I S S U E Page 7

B Y C H L O E P A R T R I D G E

L I T M U S P A P E R A T T H E T I M E S C H E L T E N -

H A M S C I E N C E F E S T I V A L 2 0 1 2 I N C O L -

L A B O R A T I O N W I T H T H E B R I T I S H L I -

B R A R Y .

#cheltscifest#cheltscifest#cheltscifest#cheltscifest @cheltfestivals@cheltfestivals@cheltfestivals@cheltfestivals

Each morning a summary of the previous days mains events would be featured in the Festivals Litmus paper . The paper included a list of all the free events available that day and gave a great brief summery of the events that had been enjoyed the previous day . In total 5 papers were produced over the course of the festival, all of which can be found and enjoyed at : www.design-science.org.uk/litmus-paper

The Festival gave a great platform for new and inspirational

talks by people throughout science- Some of my personal fa-

vourites are listed below.

3D Printing: What an amazing event, it literally was what it said

on the tin— A 3D model, like a car or a walking stick ,for example,

was sent to the printer and then printed. The science behind the

printer was amazing. A microscopic layer of desired material was

sprayed onto a surface and then lasered to set, the next layer was

then sprayed on top and lasered and so on and so forth. The end

result was a 3D shape which had essentially been stacked togeth-

er. The examples to touch and hold where incredible, but the print-

er wasn't cheap!

Alexander's Adventures in Numberland: Not only is this an

amazing book, but Alex Bellos’s brief summery of it was incredi-

ble. Alex Bellos spent a year traveling the world to discover

where numbers came from, and what an amazing job he did. The

book, which I highly recommend buying, is easy to read and so

fascinating and funny. His adventures took him to India where he

discovered zero, and to Japan where the abacus is shown to be

quicker than the calculator, not to mention his encounter with

monkeys who can count.

Page 8 C O S M O L O G I C A L N E W S

The Night Sky in JulyThe Night Sky in JulyThe Night Sky in JulyThe Night Sky in July

Planets in July:

The sky in July

The sky as it would appear at 22:00 on the 10th

Observing in July is generally hampered by the late twilight but does improve toward the end of the month. On a late July evening, Vega is directly overhead and the summer Milky Way arcs from North to south horizons. Lots to see in the way of globular and open clusters, planetary nebulae and

HII regions – a great season if we get the weather!

Mercury: Is at greatest eastern elongation on the 1st July and can be seen as a magni-tude 0.6 star in the NW setting within an

hour of the sun.

Venus: Is a brilliant morning object located amongst the stars of the Hyades in Taurus and only a few degrees from Jupiter, rising over 1.5 hours before the sun and shining at

magnitude -4.4

Mars: Is still visible in the evening sky in Virgo and continuing to diminish in bright-ness throughout the month as it nears the horizon. It should be magnitude 0.8 and glow

with a dull red colour.

Jupiter: Is in Taurus and is an early morning rising almost two hours before the sun and shining at magnitude -2.0. On the 15th of the month a crescent Moon is only 1 degree

away.

Saturn: Transits before midnight and is visible all month as a bright star to the NE of Spica in Virgo. It is beginning to fade to mag-nitude 0.6 and its low altitude means that it

sets about an hour after midnight in July.

Uranus: Rises just after midnight in July and is located in the constellation of Pisces where it shines as a magnitude 5.8 greenish

star.

Neptune: is also a faint early morning object in Aquarius shining at magnitude 7.8 and rising just before midnight though an early morning observation about an hour past

midnight is best to see this elusive planet.

Moon In July

First quarter: 26th July

Full: 3rd July

Last Quarter: 11th July

New: 19th July

Page 9 J U L Y 2 0 1 2 I S S U E

B Y M A R T I N G R I F F I T H S

M57 The Ring Nebula

Actually the last observing year has been punc-tuated by ceaseless rain, missed opportunities, lack of anything really interesting happening in our skies such as eclipses and the only worth-while event, the Transit of Venus totally swamped by clouds. Its not that I’m jaded by the experience – this is what we have to put up with as British astronomers. However, is it too much to ask for some decent weather to enjoy the

night sky?

Talking of enjoying the night sky, many are not even seeing the stars anymore and have stopped looking up. Most of the public would fail miserably to identify a constellation or a planet and only really notice the moon when its on the horizon looming large and painted in a reddish hue to due dust in the atmosphere. Beyond that looking up does not occur to most people. The night skies are fading from memory because they are almost rendered invisible by a common

foe – light pollution.

Light pollution is eroding the heritage of the night sky and is rendering the starry night down to a constellation of barely discernible dots that have no relationship to us or to each other.

What can we do about it?

As individuals we can actually do quite a lot. Most of us are aware of local lights which inter-fere with our view of the skies either here in Treforest or when we return home. Many of these lights are needlessly bright security lights installed by security conscious neighbours who

don’t have a clue why they need the lights or how to ensure they are directed toward the ground rather than the sky. A quiet word with them to turn them off as reasonable times of the night (between midnight and 5:00am) and an invitation to come and look through binoculars or a telescope so they can enjoy the wonders of the universe usually works well and builds a rapport with them. Extend this to the rest of your neighbourhood and an impromptu star part (with some drinks – but not too much!) usually goes down very well at raising awareness of the

problem and allowing them to address it.

For local companies with warehouses or office complexes, it may be a good idea to approach one of the managers and deal with their light pollution on a cost effective basis. All companies hate paying bills, so trying to save them money in electricity by turning the lights off or at least down, does them and you a favour. Even direct-ing any external security lighting downward so that it’s illuminating the yard or car park rather than the surrounding area is always an im-provement. These are measures that are per-sonal and are generally appreciated by all. If you get no joy, you can always address the problem by means of the Clean Neighbourhoods and Environment Act 2005 which gives redress through the local councils who can nominate such excessive lighting as a nuisance and apply

the law to tone it down.

You can also write to your local councils and advocate a policy to turn street lighting off after midnight, or turn off half of their streetlights in a cost saving exercise. Many councils are fol-lowing new regulations and are replacing old bulbs with more efficient ones and are lowering their wattage by 50% and more – commend them for this move and nudge them towards a

full saving by turning the lights off.

Use the environmental factors too in your edu-cation of others. Lighting at night is now in-creasingly responsible for certain types of can-cer (Breast, Colon and Rectal) due to the re-duced production of the hormone Melatonin, which the body needs to maintain good health and rest. Additionally, turning the lights down or even off has a massive effect on crime accord-ing to statistics from the UK, Europe and Ameri-ca with between 50 – 80% reductions in the crime rate in some cases. It is also environmen-tally friendly too as the circadian rhythms of

wildlife return to their proper diurnal modes.

Much can be done to combat light pollution. Merely from an economic standpoint, why waste £1.8 billion a year lighting up the sky? This public money could be better spent elsewhere and local councils could save the public purse by investing in better lighting – or less lighting than we have at present. However, this educational work, the letter writing, star parties and inter-action with the public can only be achieved if we work at it consistently and appropriately – it is down to us as observational astronomers to do our part in reducing light pollution so that fu-ture generations will have a chance to enjoy the night sky before it disappears from the public

consciousness for good.

Llangorse lake in Brecon – once a dark sky haven, light pollution from the valleys to

the south is creeping in and destroying the night sky

A round up of the year!

Page 10 C O S M O L O G I C A L N E W S

During early May this year, lecturers Martin

Griffiths and Fraser Lewis and the large group

of first year astronomy students visited Spain’s

most eastern astronomical observatory, home

of the replica of the Lunar Module and the large

planetarium, the Observatorio Astronómico de

Mallorca in Costitx, Majorca. For six nights the

students were to study the practical aspects of

the Exploring the Sky module. These consisted

of using several 12 inch Meade LX200 tele-

scopes, each with a STL1001E CCD camera. The

telescopes were situated in small domes

named after famous astronomers such as

Christopher Clavius, Gallileo Gallilei and Johan-

nes Kepler. The purpose of the field trip was to

complete the last assessment for the mod-

ule—a detailed poster consisting of one astro-

nomical object ranging from the planets, to

deep sky objects such as planetary nebulae

and galaxies. Many of the students chose deep

sky objects such as nebulae and different

types of galaxies. Whilst all was well for the

first two nights, the students practice with the

telescopes ceased during the third night due

to an exhilarating lightening storm which

lasted all night. Although the telescopes were

out of use for that evening, the students had

plenty of work to attend to. As the weather

was bad during the night, students were not

able to collect data from the scopes, so data

from the archives were provided. Exercises

were given to the students such as creating a

light curve of an eclipsing binary star and deter-

mining the physical properties of the binary

star, the familiarization of the image processing

software Maxim DL and undertaking photometry

of standard stars to determine the limiting mag-

nitudes. Two other nights were affected by

cloudy weather. Observation planning along with

further exercises and image processing were

reacquainted to the students. The further two

clear nights gave the students the opportunity to

take their plans out and image as many objects

as they needed for their posters.

Overall, the Astronomy students obtained most

of what they required. It was quite unfortunate

about the bad weather we received however, the

students thoroughly enjoyed the trip. A small

group of the students plan on going next year

with the new first years and hope to expect

better weather.

Above—OAM main observatory active at night—

photography by Kate Middleton

Bottom left—a glimpse of the exciting lightening storm—Image taken by Kate Middleton

Above—The first year Observational Astronomy students sitting on steps opposite the

replica Lunar Module.—Photo taken by technician Gien.

Majorca Trip 2012Majorca Trip 2012Majorca Trip 2012Majorca Trip 2012

Page 11 J U L Y 2 0 1 2 I S S U E

One of the bonuses of the Observational As-tronomy course is the opportunity to visit places of industry and active research. This month we visited the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (RAL); a globally recognised scien-tific research laboratory. Named after two physicists of which our stu-dents are well familiarised with – Lord Ernest Rutherford and Sir Edward Appleton – the site boasts many facilities enabling a variety of research to take place. Such research covers topics including: research into new materials and structures, for example from battery electrolytes to turbine blades, X-ray laser research, space-based astronomy and many more.

During our visit we were given a guided tour of some of these facilities. A particular high-light of the day included the chance to see some of the original controls used for the Apollo missions. Previous students of Glamor-gan certainly made an impression at RAL when a past visit saw them press a button belonging to these controls that, well, should not have been pressed. This resulted in the shutdown of active research. It is safe to say there is now a sign which clearly states no public access, to prevent an incident like this happening again! A number of talks given by scientists at the top of their field gave us a unique insight into their current research. One such talk was given by Ruth Bramford whose work involves

the possible use of magnetic "deflector shields" to guard future astronauts from harmful space radiation.

The Earth’s magnetic field reaches out into space forming the magnetosphere. This deflects energetic plasma of the solar wind which is harmful us .

Other talks involved the effects of space weather and the impact solar activity has on human activities.

Trip to RAL 2012

BSc (Hons) Observational AstronomyBSc (Hons) Observational AstronomyBSc (Hons) Observational AstronomyBSc (Hons) Observational Astronomy

“A scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die and a new gen-eration grows up that is familiar with it.” — Max Planck Max Planck Max Planck Max Planck