chrislintott

That would do nicely. Can we use it? Thanks Chris

Hello. I'm flying on SOFIA this evening for Sky at Night, and we're observing NGC1977. I'm struggling to find an optical image which I have permission to use, ideally showing the nebula in context with M42. Can anyone help? We'll give credit if it's used. I have to leave for 'egress training' (!) in about an hour... Chris

Just a note to say I'm still bitter about the chips. Will try not to let it affect next year's judging.

No problem Jonk - no offence taken.

Ribbit. Ribbit.

Worth adding that most of the light we see from a supernova isn't from the 'explosion' itself, but rather from the radioactive decay of unstable elements created during the initial event - so the 'supernova' we see is already the aftermath of what's gone before.

Just a note to say I hope you enjoy tonight's program - we're set for the foreseeable future on the 2nd Sunday of the month, at 10pm on BBC4 (plus various repeats). I'll ask about why the series link doesn't work, but as the only (?) monthly show on national TV I suspect it's just that they didn't allow that option. You'll (almost always) have Maggie, myself and Pete with appearances from others including Lucie, Chris North, Paul Abel and various others scattered throughout the series - in this case Helen Czerski. Lucie's back next month, for example. Chris

Most universities with Astro departments will take students for work experience - although in Oxford at least places go quickly. If there's somewhere near you surf their website and if nothing obvious exists write a letter to the head of department or the schools liaison if one exists. Remember to say why you want a place - ie that you love astronomy. Good luck! Chris

Oops - just seen someone already mentioned the arXiv. Sorry for barging in.

Blame the journals (there are a lot of people working on fixing this, though). However, almost every astronomy paper is posted on arxiv.org, sometimes before even being submitted to a journal, and it's free to access.

Dear all I wanted to drop in and say thank you on behalf of the Sky at Night team for all these tributes to our friend Patrick. I know he would have enjoyed reading them himself (while denying, of course, that he was anything special). I'm another who owes a love of astronomy to listening to him speak, and many of the memories here could be mine too. Do go out and work on the Moore marathon if you can. Chris Lintott PS Please don't ask about the future - there'll be time to think about that later. There's still one more program in the can with Patrick which will be shown in January.

Hi all A couple of quick comments in case they're of interest. Firstly, with my 'Sky at Night' hat on, the problem is mostly one of timing - we can't include everyone and everything (which leads to lots of friendly arguments amongst the team). Spectroscopy does suffer slightly from being more complicated to explain for a general audience, and for being harder to illustrate. (The same is of course true of many other areas of astronomy). If you have good results, or interesting data, do let as many of us know as possible (emailing me on chrislintott@cantab.net is usually a good start) and perhaps we can include more on future programs. Wearing my professional hat for a second, I think one of the biggest problems we face in the next few years is arranging sufficient spectroscopic follow-up for interesting targets; the flood of discoveries from the big supernova surveys is already causing problems. I suspect the long term solution is for the big robotic networks accessible to amateurs to install spectrographs, but if amateurs can use their own equipment that would be great. From previous brief conversations, it's often seemed to me that there's a gap between the spectroscopic resolution that can be achieved by most of the amateurs working in the area and that that's needed for science, but I'd be happy to be updated if that's no longer true. Thanks for the comments on the program. Cheers Chris