ROSIE HOLDSWORTH: Hello Wild Tales listener, Rosie here. This

week we're doing something a bit different. I'm sharing another

podcast I thought you might like. Nature Fix brings you

sumptuous stories of outdoor adventure inspiration. In this

episode you'll discover the magic of the night sky on an

urban stargazing walk and I'll be back next time for more Wild

Tales.

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 going to 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. So

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 and the skies are just

starting to 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 spots

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

objects 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 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

leasing 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 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 with that. You lose 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 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 funneled 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.

And 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

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 Ray and the

Wildlifeers podcast for little ones. See you next time.