I can't see one single star. Can you, George, anywhere?
Being a British stargazer has never been easy.
Yes. And there is Saturn. Is it gone? Oh, no.
Just as I got it on the cross wires it blacked right out.
How absolutely typical. There's nothing we can do about it.
It's half one. It's raining.
And the satellite photo shows cloud for the rest of the night.
So all we can do is shrug and hope for better luck tomorrow.
I love it, Chris. Always the optimist. I do try.
Over the years on The Sky At Night, we've tried to bring
you the experience of stargazing.
But as you can see, with the British weather, even with the best
will in the world, things can go horribly wrong.
How many of us have planned a night of stargazing only
for it to be ruined by the weather forecast?
So today we're here in the gorgeous Oxford Botanic Garden,
with a slightly different kind of show for you.
We'll be offering you alternative,
equally dazzling spectacles
for when the nights are short,
and the stars are hiding.
BOTH: Welcome to The Sky At...
..Day. ..Day.
Now, there's never any guarantee with the weather.
But these long summer days do provide an opportunity
to discover astronomical wonders
hiding in plain sight.
Absolutely.
Now, the star of today's show is definitely our local star,
the sun.
So as well as telling you how to observe it safely,
here's what we've got coming up.
In this programme, we'll speak to the scientists who have flown
space probes into the sun's atmosphere.
We couldn't power the spacecraft without the power supply melting.
We couldn't design a heat shield that wouldn't burst into flames.
And we meet the amateurs gazing up at the sun
from down here on Earth.
We have exploding prominences that are erupting from the sun.
We see plasma shapes on the edge of the sun that look like monsters.
George Dransfield is back hunting
for micrometeorites in the sunshine.
Wow. There's a chunk of magnetic stuff there!
There must be some micrometeorites in here.
And we look west to Bristol, for a sunset
masterclass from Dr Hannah Wakeford.
As we move towards sunset,
the sun is moving through a longer distance of atmosphere.
So all we end up with is this beautiful, red, orange sunset.
But first, to the star of the show.
Despite being our local star,
and our constant companion
for over four and a half billion years, there are still many aspects
of the sun that remain a mystery.
Chris spoke to Justin Kasper from the Parker Solar probe,
Nasa's record-breaking mission that flew into the sun's atmosphere.
Liftoff of the mighty Delta four heavy rocket with Nasa's
Parker Solar probe.
A daring mission to shed light on the mysteries
of our closest star, the sun.
Well, Justin, thank you for joining us.
Where did the idea for the Parker probe come from?
Before Nasa even existed in the United States,
there were some studies that were carried out that asked
the question, "If you could send a satellite into space, what kind
"of science would you do?"
And one of the ideas was the concept of a solar probe.
And so, solar probe -
the goal was send the spacecraft close enough into the sun.
You could dip into its atmosphere,
figure out why its atmosphere was so hot,
and what exactly it is that happens in the atmosphere
that makes these jets that we call the solar wind appear and flow
through interplanetary space.
So why did it take so long between the initial idea
and the launch of the Parker Solar Probe?
We had a few technical challenges.
First, it was just technically impossible.
We couldn't power the spacecraft
without the power supply melting.
We couldn't design a heat shield that wouldn't burst into flames.
And then over time, we started figuring out new tricks.
So using Venus, instead of going out to Jupiter to get close to the sun,
using special solar panels that can survive with high
temperatures, and actually pumping water behind them to cool them
off so they don't melt when we're near the sun.
But of course, the whole point of doing this is to take some
scientific instruments along with you.
I know you're involved in... It's Sweap, isn't it?
Your instrument.
Tell us about that instrument and what it's trying to do.
It's a lot like recording the weather on Earth.
You know, you want to know how windy it is,
which way the wind's going, what...
Maybe what the pressure is and how it's changing.
And so the Sweap investigation measures the main particles
in the sun's atmosphere,
and we scoop up samples of the sun's atmosphere each time we fly by.
And then the sensors on the spacecraft analyse those samples,
and they report back.
"OK, here's the temperature, the direction.
"There was this much helium.
"The electrons were headed this way.
"The helium was headed that way."
And, well, you're now there.
You've had a few orbits close to the sun.
What have we found out so far?
We flew through that outer boundary,
we call that the Alfven surface,
for the first time last year.
That was very exciting.
But one of the surprises was the surface.
While it was very clear when we were above or below it,
it had to be very wrinkled to explain
how we were able to move in and out.
So different kinds of solar wind coming from different regions
on the sun seemed to push the sun's atmosphere closer, further.
So this, you know, big surprise,
it's not just a simple spherical shell
it's some very complicated surface.
And what did your particle experiment record, as you were going
in and out of that surface? Did you see a change?
What we weren't expecting, that was amazing to see,
is the pressure exerted by the particles in the sun's
atmosphere in that region.
So the pressure of the ions, the pressure of the electrons,
that pressure was 100 times smaller
than the pressure exerted
by the sun's magnetic field.
Those particles were really trapped,
and forced to move wherever
the magnetic field decided it wanted to move.
The magnetic field was calling all the shots, and it was a real
surprise to see that,
even though we were still, you know, millions of kilometres
away from the sun.
What are you most looking forward to in what's left of the mission?
What are the results that really excite you?
So, what's going to happen now over the next couple of years,
is we're going to get, you know, nearly twice as close.
And I really think we're going to be able to make that connection,
finally, between the surface of the sun is doing something,
and that's resulting in this super hot atmosphere and accelerating
the wind in these given ways.
And I think we're going to unlock those secrets. Excellent.
It's really exciting stuff and a great mission.
Thank you so much for telling us about it.
And we'll catch up soon.
My pleasure. Great talking to you.
Unlike the stars in the night sky, we can see our star
all year round.
And moreover, we can observe its atmosphere and its surface.
We don't even need the Parker Solar Probe to do this.
We went to Bath to meet Simon Holbeche and discover
how he's showing his community the sun in a whole new light.
Looking directly at the sun is extremely dangerous,
and can permanently damage your eyes.
But there are ways to safely observe the sun using specialist filters.
Simon uses these at his observation events.
I was about nine or ten when I got my first telescope
and managed to take it outside,
and start trying to find things
in the night sky.
I endured hours of frustration,
trying to find any objects in the night sky.
I even thought the moon was going to be really easy.
Turned out it was really tough as well.
But the biggest leap was actually
joining a local astronomical society.
For me, discovering outreach was a really important part of my life.
I learnt that I could actually help out other people directly,
to inspire other people, to get them to look at the world
in a different way.
Are the two dots next to each other? Yeah.
You see it?
And so it's absolutely delightful today when we can come out
in the sunshine and use the sun as our reason for being outside.
It's an astronomical object,
and we can look up and wonder
about the science behind it.
So fingers crossed, the sun will eventually find a way through.
So today we've been using several different methods
to look at the sun.
We've been using a pair of binoculars,
and the light goes through one side
of the binoculars, and we project it onto a piece of card.
OK, that is a sunspot.
So the sun has different layers.
The base layer that we can see is called the photosphere,
but there's an atmosphere above it called the chromosphere.
So what we've got is some specialist telescopes to be able to see
those two individual layers.
We've put a filter on the front, which takes out most
of that really harmful sunlight.
So 99.999% of the light, with some of our filters.
And that allows us to put an ordinary eyepiece
behind the telescope and actually stare down the photosphere
of the sun.
We can see, instead of one big splodge, that you might see
with binoculars, we can see the individual sunspots.
It's a great time
to look at the sun at the moment.
We're just coming out of a solar minimum, and we're building
up towards solar maximum.
So come the next couple of years, by 2024, 2025
the sun should look like myself when I was a spotty teenager,
absolutely covered in sunspots.
And we'll be able to see it all changing very dynamically.
But what really interests me is that there's an atmosphere
above the sun, the chromosphere, and that gets really excited
by all the energy that's coming through, all these sunspots,
and it's in constant turmoil.
So using the red light telescope, we're actually able
to look at the solar prominences.
All the stuff that's coming out of the sunspots is arching
through, making beautiful fountains on the edge of the sun, contrasting
with the darkness of space.
Hello!
So you get some people that will just look through and go, "Oh, OK.
"Oh, that's interesting."
Do you want to have another look?
Occasionally you'll get someone who's absolutely inspired,
where they'll just look through and they just can't stop looking.
They want to have another look.
And we've got a queue of people behind them.
So it's one of those moments in life where you've got to say,
"I really want to encourage you,
"but let's move you to the next telescope,"
or just hang around 15 more minutes,
and I'll give you another look.
I know it's been a successful observing event because people
have talked at the eyepiece.
It's spinning faster, and that kind of...
But more importantly,
it's when they're walking away.
With their parents or together,
and just having a general chitchat
about what they've seen, and how exciting it's been.
And I know that that conversation is going to continue
in the car, back at home and potentially
in the school or in the workplace.
And people are actually going to be looking up and enjoying
the sky much more than they were the day before.
There are many champions of astronomy up and down the country.
But if you want to get involved, get in contact
with your local astronomical society.
Now, I'm sure you remember George Dransfield, the astrophysicist
who went on an adventure to Antarctica.
Well, she's back, and this time
she's on a mission for The Sky At Night.
Besides awesome stargazing conditions, there's another thing
Antarctica was perfect for.
Oh, my goodness.
Look at that waddle!
No, not penguins.
Meteorites.
Now, sadly, I never got to search the snow for little space rocks.
But whilst hunting for daytime activities to engage my students
with astronomy, I heard that I could find micrometeorites
right here in Birmingham.
And, apparently, the best place to find them is on a roof.
As meteors tear through the Earth's atmosphere, tiny particles break
off, raining down from the sky onto mountains, forests
and even urban rooftops.
Tonnes of this cosmic dust sprinkle the Earth every day, meaning
these tiny micrometeorites
are more common than you might think.
So I'm hoping to find some micrometeorites in all this dust
I'm sweeping up, but it would take me ages to find them manually.
Fortunately, micrometeorites like their meteor parents,
have a really high iron and nickel content so I can find them
with the help of my magnet.
So much dust.
There must be some micrometeorites in here.
Wow. There's a chunk of magnetic stuff there.
Not all of this is going to be micrometeorites,
but what I'm going to do now that I found the magnetic stuff,
is give it a bit of a wash and see what's in there.
Micrometeorites, also known as
Cosmic Spherules or even Stardust,
aren't a recent discovery.
But the fact that anyone can find them anywhere is a new idea
pioneered by Norwegian geologists
Jon Larsen and Jan Braly Kihle.
OK, I've been at this for a while now,
and I think I might have actually found one,
but I'm not entirely sure.
So I'm going to get in touch with the guys who pioneered
this method, and see what they say about it.
So thank you guys so much for dialling in and helping out.
So, I've been trying to search for micrometeorites all day,
and turns out it's not as easy as I thought.
So how did you guys first figure that you could search
for micrometeorites in an urban environment?
13 years ago, in the summer of 2009,
I was having breakfast outdoors
on the white table on my veranda,
and I suddenly noticed
that there was something strange,
because there was a shiny dot.
So I picked it up on my finger and I thought, "Wow,
"this is not a rock."
It triggered my curiosity big time.
And from then on, it was no return.
And you guys haven't just been, like, finding them.
But you've come up with a really cool, special technique
for photographing them.
And I've seen some, like, otherworldly pictures you've taken.
So how did you design that photographing technique?
So this is... This is the set-up.
Oh, wow.
So it's... The footprint is very, very small.
It's extremely compact.
Each of the images that you have seen on the net consists
of between 200 and 1,000 single images.
In some cases, up to 1,200, 1,300 images
at this very high magnification.
The focus depth is extremely shallow.
And what we are doing
is we are staging the space rocks,
like any portrait photographer
would do with putting lights,
and play with light and shadow.
In order to make the best results.
Wow. So what are the main categories, then?
What are the main groups that they kind of fall into?
Depending upon the entry angle, etc,
that creates the entire variety
of types, from the unmelted ones until the completely melted ones.
And in between there are, let's say, a handful of main types,
like, when they start to crystallise,
it curves olivine crystals,
and they get smaller and smaller.
And up to very fine-grained crystal lumens.
All these micrometeorites, they are not two alike.
You recently met the person who went all the way to Antarctica
to find these micrometeorites.
And then... So, how did that story go?
At that time, the consensus in academia was that the cosmic dust
particles, of course, you cannot find them.
So Michel Maurette, he thought,
"Well, in the cold desert at the South Pole,
"it's below zero all the time.
"If a particle lands there, it might be frozen.
"So it might be an archive of frozen micrometeorites within the blue
"ice of Antarctica."
And he went there, and then he found them.
Last month,
I visit the old master,
and we paid a tribute to him,
thanked him for the work, and just for fun,
I took some magnetic samples outside his house,
and in that dust there was one micrometeorite.
No, really? Yeah.
Yes, yes. Oh, wow.
So the guy who went to the end of the world
to find the micrometeorites, he actually had it just
outside his own house.
That is really, really fascinating. And I absolutely love that story.
So this is what I found today on the roof
of the University of Birmingham.
So what do you think?
Am I onto something?
OK, so the size should be OK.
And the colour is OK.
But the black material
on the top is something
that we do not regularly observe.
But I think that the lack...
If that's... If you have been on the roof
and found only one,
it tells me that you have looked in not the right places,
in the right way, because any roof anywhere, even
in remote places, will be so filled with spherules.
OK, brilliant.
So I didn't find one this time, but now I am equipped with better
information, and I'm motivated to go out there and try again.
Well, thank you again, so much for your time, both of you.
It's been an absolute pleasure to meet you. OK. Thank you, likewise.
If you want to get involved in that meteoritic daytime activity
or the Project Stardust Citizen Science programme, then head
on over to our website where we've put a guide on how to get started.
Now with his favourite daytime observations,
it's Pete - a man who's finally got a good night's sleep.
Now, it probably comes as no surprise that the sky at day
can be just as cloudy as the sky at night.
But what might be a surprise are the number of things
of an astronomical nature that you can see during the day.
The sun is an obvious candidate, of course.
The moon can be seen, often, during the day.
The problem with the moon, when the sun is up, is that it doesn't
stand out quite as well as it does at night.
So you have to know roughly where it is and you have to look
that little bit harder. As well as the moon,
there are the bright planets, of course.
Venus can often be seen when it's far enough from the sun
in a clear blue sky.
Again, as long as you know where to look. Mercury can be seen
with a telescope, and so can Jupiter and Saturn.
But as well as the daytime objects
you can see, there are other
interesting phenomena, which are linked to the end of the day.
And one in particular really stands out for me.
When I was a boy, I read about what's called the green flash.
This is an effect which occurs when the sun is really low
down in the sky, close to the horizon,
typically seen over a seaward horizon.
The top of the sun is supposed to go a vibrant green.
Well, it turns out that the atmosphere acts like a giant
prism, and bright objects when they get low down,
have their light split or spread into a spectrum of colour.
Now the top of the bright object will have the blue-green part
of the spectrum, whereas the bottom edge
will show the redder part of the spectrum.
So it's like all the colours have been spread out,
with blue-green at the top and the red part at the bottom.
Now, our atmosphere is really good at scattering blue light,
so the blue component gets lost,
which leaves a green fringe at the top and a red fringe at the bottom.
Now, if you've got a bright object like the sun or even the moon,
actually, as it's getting very low down,
if the atmospheric conditions are correct,
very low down, the atmosphere can act like a lens,
cylindrical lens, which splits off that -
what's called the green rim at the top of the sun or the moon.
And it will create a gap between that bit of green
and the object which has set.
So that bit of green hangs above the horizon,
and that is what is known as the green flash.
I've been lucky enough to see the green flash
a few times in my life.
One of the most spectacular instances was from Chile,
where the other worldly green colour was even more vivid to the eye
than I was able to capture with my camera.
It was a truly beautiful experience.
Sailors used to say that, if you see a green flash, you're set
up for fine weather the next day.
Or someone's coming back
from the dead, if you believe in pirate ghost stories.
But what causes these spectacular sunsets?
And can we learn to read them like the sailors did, to predict
a fine night stargazing?
Well, here's Dr Hannah Wakeford from the University of Bristol
with a masterclass on sunsets.
The Earth is one of a kind.
Unlike if we were standing
on the moon or Mercury where you'd see the blackness of space,
here we have blue skies.
That's caused by particles of gas
in the atmosphere, scattering the white light from our star.
But as we head towards sunset,
that turns into a red-y orange colour.
The sun hasn't changed.
Our atmosphere hasn't changed.
So what's happening?
Let's go have a look.
So this tank is going to act as our atmosphere.
We've got water here, with a little bit of milk powder in it.
This torch is going to act like our sun. When the sun
is directly overhead,
that light is being scattered in just the short
wavelengths, the blue.
So that is why we see the sky being blue.
As we move towards sunset,
the sun is moving through a longer distance of atmosphere.
It has to go a longer way.
So all of that blue light,
and some of the other light is scattered away.
So all we end up with is this beautiful red-orange sunset.
You can see that here, where we start out blue right at the front.
And then it slowly turns orange as it goes through the water,
and we see our orange-red sunset.
Now, that's the physics of how we get a sunset.
But sunsets can actually be a good indicator
of the weather to come.
So if you find yourself out stargazing without the wonders
of modern technology, you can use the old adage -
"Red sky at night, shepherd's delight,
"red sky in morning, shepherd's warning,"
to help you out.
This is actually a fairly good indicator, especially
for somewhere like the UK,
and that's because between the latitudes of 30 and 60 degrees,
we have westerly winds.
If you have a red sky at night, shepherd's delight, there'll be some
good stargazing for you.
And that's because you've got a high pressure system on the west,
and that means that you've got good weather incoming.
However, if you see a red sky in the morning,
that really is a shepherd's warning.
That beautiful weather system has passed you already.
It is in the east,
so it's already blown over the UK,
and that means you've got a low pressure system coming in.
So the air is going to be rising,
condensing into clouds,
and you're going to get stormy, blustery weather
like we've got today.
So - red sky at night, shepherd's delight, great stargazing.
Red sky in morning, shepherd's warning.
Get your brollies out.
Sunsets aren't just a predictor of weather.
They can give you examples of things happening half a world away.
A volcanic explosion will jettison particles into the atmosphere,
causing the sunsets to become purple.
If you're in the Arctic or Antarctic with beautiful, clear skies,
you can sometimes see a sunset for days.
But sunsets aren't unique to the Earth.
We can also look at the sunsets from other planets.
Mars, for example, has a blue sunset.
We can go even further and look at the sunsets
of exoplanets, planets that orbit other stars.
And from this, we can learn more about their environments,
more about what makes up their atmospheres.
We've seen sunsets from bright greens to film noir, grey scales,
and these indicate different things
in the atmosphere, blocking
and scattering that light.
And from that, we can learn more about these distant alien worlds.
Just imagine the possibilities.
You will never see a sunset the same way again.
I love a good sunset. Me too.
In fact, I'm going to go back to using sunsets instead of apps
to predict the weather. Really?
I think I'm going to stick with the app.
Oh, possibly wise, possibly.
That's it for this month's programme.
And I do hope we've giving you some ideas of things you can do
when the clouds ruin your night stargazing.
Next month, we'll be turning our attention back to the night sky,
with the news that you've been waiting for since Christmas.
The first images from JWST, our newest space telescope.
We'll be following the story of JWST so far,
and meeting some of the scientists that can't wait
to get their hands on the telescope.
We hope you'll join us.
Until then, from Oxford's Botanic Garden...
BOTH: Good afternoon.
# But your momma always said, Look up into the sky
# Find the sun on a cloudy day
# On a cloudy day
# But your momma always said Look up into the sky
# Find the sun on a cloudy day
# On a cloudy day
# But your momma always said Look up into the sky
# Find the sun on a cloudy day
# On a cloudy day. #