Friday February 15th was a very eventful day for astronomers world-wide.  Simon Parkin had already arranged to broadcast the weather live from the New Forest Observatory that evening due to the near miss asteroid DA14 that was due in our skies that evening.  What nobody had expected was the huge Russian no-near-miss-at-all asteroid that crash landed that morning.  Typical, you wait for over a Century and then two come along on the same day.  Anyway, here is some YouTube footage of the broadcast from the NFO.  Yes I did get West mixed up for East (the asteroid came up from low in the East) – I put this down to my two years in New Zealand where up is down and left is right and it has absolutely nothing to do with my age   Video footage is Copyright Meridian News & Weather.

Simon Parkin and the Meridian Weather film team – together with satellite transmission van – did a live broadcast from the New Forest Observatory on 15/02/2013, the evening of the near miss flyby of the asteroid.  Here are a couple of stills from just before the live transmission.

Simon Parkin showed the recent Crescent nebula with Carbon star image on tonight’s Meridian Weather

Simon Parkin used the recent UU Aurigae Carbon star image to introduce his Meridian Weather slot on 05/04/2012 at 10:30 p.m.

Video footage Copyright Meridian News & Weather 2012.

A few years back Chris Packham ran an Inside Out BBC programme on the New Forest Observatory.  Chris and the BBC team did the most amazing job on this and you can see the result of their work  here.  Video footage Copyright BBC T.V.

The recent North America nebula image taken using the mini-WASP array made an appearance on tonight’s Meridian Weather programme courtesy of Simon Parkin   Thank you Simon for continuing to show images taken at the New Forest Observatory.  Video footage copyright Meridian TV.

On last night’s (4th April 2011) Meridian Weather, Simon Parkin showed the Leo Trio image acquired at the New Forest Observatory.  Video footage Copyright Meridian News and Weather.  View the video here.

The New Forest Observatory image of the Markarian Chain of galaxies made an appearance on Simon Parkin’s Weather programme on Meridian TV both last night at 6:20 p.m. (I missed that one) and today at 3:55 p.m. (caught that one as you can see here).  Video footage Copyright Meridian TV.

Apparently Simon Parkin showed the Markarian Chain of galaxies (now crossing your southern horizon) acquired at the New Forest Observatory, on his weather slot on Meridian TV tonight.  Unfortunately I didn’t see it – damn!!

Got phoned up by Radio Solent this morning to make a few comments on UFOs – aired live about 10:40 a.m.

Well what can I say?  To quote Arthur C Clarke “You haven’t seen a UFO unless you got the Mars Licence number”.  I saw TONS of UFOs when I lived in Dartmoor National Park, the skies were so dark (when it was clear) – but although they were unidentified as far as I was concerned, this doesn’t make them extra-terrestial craft.  And it seems odd that the thousands of amateur deep-sky photographers (like me) that are out imaging every clear night have nothing to report – lots of satellites, plenty of planes, and even the odd asteroid – but sorry – no UFOs.

This isn’t too surprising, as (read below) space is BIG.  The Universe could be teeming with life and we would simply never cross paths – the probabilities are just too small.  And if there are life-forms similar to the Borg out there, maybe this is for the good

Don’t get me wrong – I would LOVE to see a real UFO – but as far as I am concerned we have never (yet) been visited by an intelligent extra-terrestial, and given the vastness of space and the probabilities involved – we never will be