CLAIRE HICKINBOTHAM: Hello and welcome to Nature Fix with me
Claire Hickenbotham. Each month we take you with us to meet the
people whose lives have been changed by the outdoors and join
them in a place that most inspires them. Today we're
joining astronomer and adventure lover Nazanin Jahanshahi in the
middle of Manchester.
Naz shows us how the City centre might look an unlikely place for
a celestial tour. But look up and you'll be amazed at what you
might see. And this winter's evening, we're in for a treat.
We're looking at stars, a rare planetary parade, and getting
tips on hunting for the Northern Lights. So let's wrap up warm
for an awe-inspiring city stargazing voyage.
NAZANIN JAHANSHAHI: We're actually in Manchester city
centre right now and there is a lot of traffic, lots of people,
lots of light pollution which would seem like a pretty unusual
place to talk about the night sky but I think there's a lot up
there that people can still see so we're gonna go for a little
walk and see what we can see.
I'm Naz, my love of the skies kind of began when I was around
seven years old. My granddad used to ask me to point out the
moon in the sky. Then when it came to high school and actually
studying, you know, sciences, physics ended up being my
favourite subject and when it came to studying something at
university I chose physics with astrophysics.
I've gone on to work at Kielder Observatory, other hobbies have
come into that now so I'm a climber, we love to go
everywhere in the country.
I'm still very much an outdoorsy person. I spend a lot of time
outside but I still do try and find time to look up and look at
the skies. Even on my journey to and from work I will always be
looking up. It's not always the the safest thing to do as I do
ride a motorbike and yeah all of that has come into it but that's
essentially me.
This is Deansgate around rush hour. The skies are just
starting to get completely darken.
So we've ventured off the main road and we're just walking
through Castlefield.
There's still lots and lots of lights around, but there's just
a little quiet area. There's no lights directly above us and
that's allowed us to see a little bit more of the sky.
CLAIRE HICKINBOTHAM: Anyone can enjoy the stars just by looking
up on a clear night. And on this particular evening there's a lot
to see up in space. But if you want to understand more about
what you're looking at, Naz says there are some great books or
apps to get you started.
NAZANIN JAHANSHAHI: The most commonly used app is called
Stellarium and it's free and it's got all of the information
you could possibly need about the night sky. So it's one of
the best tools that you can take out with you for the first time.
We are looking at an incredibly clear winter night at the
moment, and it's still darkening a little bit.
It's just past sort of six o'clock, so we're still waiting
for the skies to get completely dark, but the brightest objects
have at this point kind of revealed themselves. Looking at
the sky in, like I say, Manchester city centre, the
brightest objects that we can actually see after the sun and
the moon are the planets, when they are in the sky.
And at the moment we do have the planetary parade going on.
Immediately after sunset we do have quite a few of the planets
in the sky and the brightest of those is Venus. After the sun
and the moon Venus is the brightest object in the sky so I
can see that that is not twinkling, it's not moving and
there are no flashing lights.
So I'm definitely looking at a planet and that is the planet
Venus. Interesting fact about Venus is that it is incredibly
close to our planet in terms of size. Some people think of it as
our sister planet, but it is very different in composition.
The atmosphere of Venus is incredibly toxic.
It has sulfur in its atmosphere, lots of cloud. It's very, very
hot, it's actually the hottest planet in our solar system. Even
though it isn't the closest planet to the sun, it is the
hottest because of that cloudy atmosphere that traps all of
that heat. So, not necessarily a planet that we would ever really
want to spend a lot of time on.
Moving over towards the sort of darker part of the night sky
away from the sunset, we can see another bright object. And that
bright object is the planet Jupiter, the biggest planet in
our solar system.
It's absolutely massive so even though it is on the other side
of the asteroid belt it is incredibly far away from us. It
is still very very bright in the night sky. It is a gas giant
planet so it is mainly composed of gas and that gas is whipping
around the planet at incredibly high speeds.
One feature that can be spotted on Jupiter if you have a very
very good telescope and if you are in darker skies, better
conditions, you can see Jupiter's great red spot which
is essentially a massive storm kind of like a tornado or a
hurricane happening on Jupiter that is just swirling around and
it creates this red spot within that gas that's spinning around
the planet that has changed shape and changed size
throughout our lifetimes and it's really interesting watching
it evolve and we can learn lots about what's going on on that
planet.
But that great red spot is about two or three times the size of
our planet. It is absolutely huge.
The next bright object that we can see is the planet Mars. And
you can very evidently, again, in the centre of Manchester,
with all of this light pollution around, you can still see the
orange colour in that planet. So Mars has its red colour because
of the iron that exists on the surface.
So a lot of people call it the red planet and people aren't
always sure what that red colour comes from. There's a lot of
iron on that planet and it has oxidised so it essentially is
covered with rust so it's very bright in the sky, it's very
orange. We have rovers on Mars we've sent missions to Mars to
bring back martian soil so we are learning lots about Mars and
we perhaps might see people on Mars within our lifetimes.
So we're going to move on from this location. We're going to
move on to Castlefield Bowl which is a sort of a hot spot
that people go and sit around. But we're going to continue
looking up at the sky and see what we can see.
We're currently walking past Castlefield Viaduct. I think
Manchester in general does have quite a lot of really lovely
viaducts and they really add to the sort of infrastructure of
the whole place and keeps it at its roots I think.
When I want to get away from the light pollution and I really
want to do some serious observing whether it's with a
telescope or a pair of binoculars or simply if there is
a meteor shower happening and I want to be somewhere dark so I
could catch even the the smallest of shooting stars
facing across the sky, I will venture further out and my go-to
place around Manchester is the Peak District.
There's lots and lots of areas that you can go to and there's
plenty of resources that we can use as well to discover the
darker skies a little bit closer to us. So if you go onto Google
and you type in dark sky maps, the sky darkness is essentially
measured and plotted on maps.
So we can see exactly where it might be darker around our area
and even if it's only marginally darker than where you live, it
still makes a huge difference. But light pollution is a massive
problem for not only researchers trying to do research on space
and what's out there but also just general human life and
nature as well. Our circadian rhythms can be massively
affected by artificial light and we are absolutely surrounded by
it at this point. There's no getting away from it unless you
go to incredibly isolated places. And personally I think
it causes us to lose touch with our surroundings, the nature
around us.
I think it's also really profound being able to look up
at the night sky and think about what's out there, think about
the true scale of what's out there. And how incredibly
unlikely it is that we've come into existence and consider all
of these things and our place in the universe and i think when we
can't see the night sky you kind of start to lose touch of that
you touch of what it really means to spend time on planet
Earth.
CLAIRE HICKINBOTHAM: Naz reaches Castlefield Bowl, Manchester's
famous open-air music venue. It gives big views of the darkening
sky, and Naz takes a front-row seat for the stars putting on
their celestial show.
NAZANIN JAHANSHAHI: We've arrived at Castlefield Bowl and
we've got quite a nice view of the sky. We can see quite a big
patch of it. And we're going to have a little sit down and talk
about some of the other celestial bodies and then go on
to Aurora hunting.
So looking up at the skies, usually the first place that I
would recommend kind of beginning your journey around
the night sky is by looking for the North Star. And the way that
we find the North Star is by looking for the Big Dipper. And
there are seven stars that make up the shape of a pan. And once
you've spotted the Big Dipper, from there it becomes quite easy
to navigate your way around the sky.
So the way that we find the North Star is by finding the two
stars that make up the sort of the pan edge, so the opposite
side to the pan handle, those two stars. You draw a line
between those two stars and then you keep on drawing that line
through the sky, up away from the pan and the next bright star
that you get to or the next...
brighter star that you get to that star there is the North
Star. A common mistake that people make is that the North
Star is the brightest star in the sky. It's not it's actually
somewhere around the sort of 50th brightest in the sky. It's
not a particularly bright star at all but again from the centre
of Manchester i can still see it that is a star that will not
move no matter what season we're in no matter what time of the
day it is, it will always remain in the exact same spot. So it's
a really good place to sort of anchor yourself in the sky and
from there you can work your way out to the other constellations
immediately around it.
So there are some nights where we can't see the moon or we see
it a little bit later on. When the moon is at its fullest
phase, it is essentially on the opposite side of the sun in
where it appears in the sky.
So as the sun sets is when that full moon will rise on the
opposite side. But we're currently in the time of the
month where the moon is reaching its new moon phase and the sun
is essentially behind it. All of the sunlight is being reflected
off the dark side, the other side of the moon and then the
side that we cannot see.
But we're currently in that new moon phase, which actually so
happens to be the best time of the month to actually do some
stargazing. Because the moon itself is its own light
pollution.
When the moon is in the sky, it can actually be a massive
hindrance to what you can see up there. And all of the sort of
fainter stars completely fade into the sky. And it's, yeah,
it's an incredibly bright object when it's up in the sky.
CLAIRE HICKINBOTHAM: A short walk through the City has
revealed some stunning secrets of the night sky. But there's
one phenomenon that tops a lot of people's bucket lists. The
aurora borealis, or the northern lights. Which appear as ethereal
rippling strips of colour. The aurora borealis happens when the
sun sends out massive flares of energy called coronal mass
ejections.
These flares travel through space on solar wind before they
penetrate the Earth's magnetic field and are funnelled to the
north and south poles. The sun's energy reacts with particles in
the Earth's atmosphere to release light, and different
elements release different colours like greens and reds.
This light display is what we see as the aurora. And Naz has
seen this celestial showstopper right here in Manchester.
NAZANIN JAHANSHAHI: So I have seen the northern lights quite a
few times. I've seen them in several locations around the
world. I've seen them in Scandinavia and Finland. I've
seen them in Iceland. I've also seen them in the UK. In Scotland
and also right here in Manchester.
On this evening where it was predicted to happen, I'd had
word that the sun had had one of these coronal mass ejections and
this ejection of energy was absolutely massive. So it had
the potential of being an incredible show and everybody
got very excited about it. On this particular evening, I was
on my way to climb at an indoor climbing centre.
And I got there with my partner, with my boyfriend, and as soon
as I got there I was looking at my phone and I thought,
tonight's the night, it's going to happen. So I actually left
him at the climbing centre and headed out into a slightly
darker part of Manchester on a hill that we call Werneth Low.
So I got up to this hill and there was people everywhere. And
that excitement was really, really nice to see. And I
interacted with people whilst we were waiting and it was very
cold. Everyone was really cold waiting, shivering, but we stood
there and we waited a few hours. We started to see a very bright
red appearing.
Something that a lot of people don't expect about the aurora,
especially when you see all of these pictures of the aurora, is
that when you see it with your own eyes, you don't see the
colours that vibrantly. And that's purely because cameras
can capture that light in a way that your eyes cannot.
That doesn't take away from the spectacle of it, that doesn't
take away from the ribbons of light, the whip across the sky.
But on this particular night, waiting for it in Manchester,
the first instance of it that we saw was very obviously red to
our own eyes. And I have never in my life seen as much colour
in the aurora as I did that night.
The skies were filled with reds, with pinks, with greens,
purples, and I could see it all with my own eyes. And it was
absolutely incredible. And I was out for an hour, an hour and a
half, trying to capture all of this, trying to take pictures of
it.
And the fact that I was able to take pictures like that, so
close to the centre of Manchester, surrounded by all of
this light pollution, was really, really spectacular for
me and will possibly be my most memorable experience of the
aurora. It is really like watching magic appear right
above your head because...
you know, it's not like you've switched it on or off. It's
something that has naturally occurred in the sky. And I think
the elusive nature of it as well makes it all that more special.
There's a lot that we can see out there if we just look up.
There is so much that you wouldn't expect, so much that
you wouldn't even know about that happens on a daily basis
that if you just look up and you question what you see up there,
you'll see things that not everyone sees.
CLAIRE HICKINBOTHAM: I hope you've enjoyed this month's
Nature Fix. For inspiration and guides to night sky watching,
head to our episode show notes. And wherever you are, don't
forget to look up. If you love nature, why not try out Wild
Tales podcast for weird and wonderful stories about our
incredible world. Or join the fun with Ranger Rae and the
Wildlifers podcast for little ones. See you next time.