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.