I was delighted to discover that Lord Rees was giving this lecture for the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society, and so I attended with friends from West Didsbury Astronomical Society.  Actually, we had to cancel our own event, scheduled for the same evening, so that we could attend!

Lord Rees zipped us painlessly through key points in the history of astronomy, shared his views on manned space flight, the possibilities of alien life, and our responsibility to our planet.

Kevin and Diane from West Didsbury Astronomical Society shared their thoughts shortly after coming out of the lecture.

The picture Kevin mentioned is explained by Martin Rees in the video at the top of this post: it’s called an Ouroboros

As the top research astronomers of both societies descended on the city, there were also several public events which took place over the week, and I showed my face at some of them!

Me showing my face at one of the NAM2012 events.

On Monday evening, together with friends from the West Didsbury Astronomical Society, I went to a public lecture by Professor Simon White, Director of the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics in Germany, with the title All from Nothing : The Structuring of Our Universe.  He explained how everything in our entire world may very well have come from nothing.  Absolutely nothing at all.  But it’s all here now.

Totally fascinating stuff.

Tuesday evening saw an astronomically-themed Bright Club which included short science talks, music and comedy – the self-styled “thinking person’s variety club”.  I really enjoyed the evening – those who had been brave enough to take to the stage were great, (props to @evanocathain, @SaturnSheila, @RainDogJones, @LuzGuzRam, @dr_paul_woods for that)  And it was lovely to meet up with people I hadn’t seen for quite a while, along with others whom I bump into more regularly.  If you see a Bright Club event near you, I’d recommend you give it a whirl – it was great fun!

Wednesday saw a tweetup for The Listener of the Recycled Electrons podcast, and as I am an incarnation of The Listener, it would have been rude not to attend. Alcohol was consumed and spilt (mostly over me, but not by me I should add) during a highly entertaining evening. The picture above was taken at the event and features The Listener and hosts.

(In the picture: @fizzpup and friend, me, @lisa_tibbs, @jen_gupta, @KarenLMasters, @freckleface12, @RadioVicky, @maguirenumber6, @Christinaananaa and in the centre, hosts @orbitingfrog and @chrislintott)

Although these posts haven’t been quite as frequent as I’d hoped, they still give an indication of lots of different things which have caught my attention during the year.

I have no intention of stopping now, and I’ll continue to collect and share things which I like.  So to end 2011, here’s a video from the European Southern Observatory showing a whole night in less than one minute.

This video depicts a whole night of work at ESO’s Paranal Observatory, from dusk till dawn. As the starry sky begins disclosing its beauties, the domes of the four VLT Unit Telescopes rapidly move to observe different celestial objects. Above the observatory, the wonderful landscape of the Milky Way rides the firmament in all its glory, while several shooting stars ‘scratch’ the sky, leaving very distinctive trails.

Credit: ESO/S. Guisard (www.eso.org/~sguisard)

Many of the early Sky at Night programmes were destroyed or lost from the BBC library. Recently this early and very rare programme from 1963 with Arthur C Clarke, was discovered in an African TV station. Patrick and Arthur were both members of the British Interplanetary Society and here they discuss bases on the Moon and Mars. Arthur C Clarke made very few interviews, so this really is a broadcasting gem- once lost, but now found.

Thanks to @badastronomer for tweeting it.

Fried Egg Nebula - Credit: ESO/E. Lagadec

A response to a tweet about lunch spawned an afternoon of cringeworthy messaging today.

The subject – #astrofood!

Of course, the obvious Mars, Galaxy, and Milky Way made an appearance (as did a schoolboy mention of the aftermath of eating, which made reference to the 7th planet from the sun – you know who you are :-p).  But tweeps were a lot more imaginative, so I thought I would share some of them here for fun.

In alphabetical order:

Big Bang-ers          Black ‘toad-in-the’ Hole          Brian Cox’s Orange Pippins

Chocolate Mintaka          Christmas Tree Cluster pudding          Crab Nebula Pate

Flying Saucers          French Orion Soup          Herschel chocolate

Ice cream sun-dae          Ju-pitta bread          Meat-eors

Ophiuchus-tard creams          Sausage and mashtroid          Space Dust

Stargazy pie          Sun spotted dick

And my top 5, in no particular order are:

• Martianmallows
• Alfalfa centauri salad
• Ensaladas (think about it!)
• Eton Messier objects
• Hubble and Squeak

If you have any more, let me know!

To give its proper name, the Kinky Red Diary is actually the Royal Astronomical Society’s diary for 2012, and it looks like Chris didn’t really need his so decided to give it away … to me!

Apparently it will sync with the iPhone 5 …

Good news – we can do something about it!

I’ve watched several TED talks in the past, and this one – featuring @BadAstronomer Phil Plait – is just as informative and entertaining.  It’s a bit of a shame the audience was either too far away or not properly microphoned as you can’t always hear their response very well.

But if Phil Plait says it’s going to be OK, then I’m happy!

Credit: ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO). Visible light image: the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope

The array has recently published its first image (above) using only twelve antennae working together — just imagine what the images will be like once all the antennae are on-line!

To find out more about ALMA, or just to see some stunning scenery, it’s well worth taking a look at this video from ESO (European Southern Observatory).  Amazing skies, telescopes being moved on trucks – it’s all here!  And my claim to fame is that I know people who work on ALMA which makes me really cool. Yes?

As a child I was allowed to stay up late to watch the series, and I found something compelling about the episodes even then, though I suppose I didn’t understand much of it at the time.

It’s been an absolute delight to rediscover the series.   All the things I remembered about it are still there – the beautiful voice with its measured delivery, the special effects – dated now, but extraordinary at the time- , and the mingling of story-telling and fact, drama and explanation.  It was just as I had remembered it.

But I also discovered things I hadn’t picked up first time round.  Things like Sagan’s advocacy of environmental issues, and his insistence that we are ‘stewards’ of our planet, holding it in trust for our descendants, but none of us ever owning it or having any rights to it.  The arguments, and the way Carl Sagan makes them, must have seemed incongruous in 1980, the decade of Ronald Regan’s escalation of the nuclear arms race.

In fact, you could probably watch the series several times over, and learn several new things every single time.  Take a look here for more detailed information about the series.

And then, just as I reached the end of the final episode I learned that, over 30 years after the appearance of the original series, a sequel is to be made.  It will bring the series up to date with scientific developments, and will be presented by Neil deGrasse Tyson, one of my favourite science communicators.

I know which box set I’ll be asking for …