Date: November 21, 2009
Title: Under a New Sky
Podcaster: David Ault
Link: David Ault: www.davidault.co.uk
Description: These are the musings of an English astronomer able for the first time to see a proper night sky and observe the movement of the stars in India over the course of 6 months.
Bio: David is an actor, writer and science presenter from the UK who performed Shakespeare in India between Sept 08 and Mar 09. He is one of the founding members of the Jodcast team, heading up the crazy pastiche division.
Today’s sponsor: This episode of “365 Days of Astronomy” is sponsored by Loch Ness Productions, a unique multimedia production company specializing in cosmically creative content and space music for planetarium and fulldome theaters worldwide. Loch Ness Productions also works with exhibit designers, observatories, science institutions and publishers to bring a love of astronomy, Earth science, and space science to audiences everywhere. On the web at LochNessProductions.com.
Transcript:
Under a New Sky
The first time I saw the New York skyline in 2001, I remember thinking to myself: “It’s real.” There was the city I’d seen so many times in films and on TV, right in front of me, and I was headed there. It was real and suddenly what I had assumed was fiction was now most definitely fact. The story I’m going to tell you is nothing dramatic or of historical significance. It contains no feat of engineering, no new discoveries – in fact, it’s very much going back to the workings of the Ancients. What it is, is my journey of the rediscovery of astronomy under a new sky.
Tell me, and I will forget; show me, and I may remember; involve me and I will understand. That’s how the Chinese saying goes, and it’s absolutely true – experience is the best teacher imaginable. My interest in astronomy started the same way as many people – going into the garden with my Dad and looking at the night sky. The clinching point for me though was looking through a telescope and seeing Saturn with its rings just hanging in the sky.
Fast forward many years, an astrophysics degree and two years’ acting training, and I became a planetarium presenter, showing people the night sky from any time or country. It’s incredible to think how much technology has advanced in my lifetime – after all, I could draw basic night skies using the BBC Micro, but now I had 8 computers creating a digital universe above me. This was my perfect job, combining science and acting in an amazing environment.
Through a remarkable set of coincidences, I then found myself heading to perform Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure in Rajasthan for six months. It’s no wonder that people describe India as a mind-blowing experience, for so it is for many reasons. Truth be told though, in the last few years I’d become disconnected with the night sky and reliant on technology to show me the universe.
Now I was in a country with clear skies for six months, performing a play daily at dusk and this gave me unprecedented access to the stars. From day to day I saw how they rose earlier, how the Moon moved, waxed and waned and Jupiter and Venus inched towards each other. Incidentally the one cloudy night while I was there was the 1st December, when Venus, Jupiter and the Moon were in triple conjunction. That was annoying.
The Sun rose and set and around the same times each night from October to March, the only difference being where it left and met the ground. There was no long, drawn-out dusk – when the Sun set, it was dark and you knew it, especially when in December daytime temperatures were 25 degrees but night-time ones were just above freezing. The Plough was no longer up all night, which really confused me, especially when needing to locate the Pole Star so low in the sky. Conversely, Orion was high in the sky and Canis Major could be seen in full following after him. In short, everything I’d talked about in the planetarium was being shown to me in practice.
This to me was raw, visceral astronomy – nightly observations and drawing conclusions from the results. I began to understand and appreciate what a difficult task – a wonderful task, mind you – it must have been for the ancient astronomers to calculate the orbits and details of the planets so many years ago. I was being reconnected to the night sky.
It was also a time for firsts – I finally got to see Scorpius and Sagittarius, difficult constellations to find in the UK, especially with light pollution on the horizon. I’d seen them digitally, but I just wasn’t prepared for the reality. The galaxy too came as a big shock and I finally got my first glimpse of Mercury early one morning when I’d been woken up by the street dogs – of course, I needed to boot up Stellarium to realise that it was Mercury I was seeing.
And this is where the Chinese proverb comes in: I’d spent ages telling people how the sky worked with a mental understanding but not a physical appreciation. I could show everyone on the dome how the sky changed from night to night. It was only when I was involved with the sky each evening that I finally understood my childhood love of astronomy.
Now I’m not knocking technology in the slightest, but I have been guilty of becoming far too reliant on it. My work comes through the internet and my friends are mostly online. The future is bright and digital, and I’m looking forward to getting stuck into all the opportunities that brings. I’ve been given a sharp reminder not to lose touch with the physical world and the sheer natural beauty that is around me.
So there you have it, my story of astronomy in India. It’ll probably come as no surprise to most of you that I found the night sky amazing – that’s why you’re listening to a podcast about it, after all. I just wanted to share my thoughts and feelings from my first trip to Asia; having seen that, I’m now keen to discover the southern hemisphere skies too.
Of course, I picked up a couple of bugs over there; the one I haven’t been cured of is the travel bug, and I’m planning a tour of the planetaria of North America next year. I’m looking forward to seeing more of the world, more of the skies and more of the people that love both. And yes, I hope to look on that New York skyline again – minus two of its towers, sadly – and be filled once more with wonder and excitement, just as I am with a clear, dark night sky.
End of podcast:
365 Days of Astronomy
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