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 🙁
The International Space Station image taken last night (and shown in the post below) made it onto Simon Parkin’s weather programme tonight 🙂 Footage Copyright Meridian T.V.
Also on this Valentine’s Day – you can hear the Radio Solent interview where I discuss the pinhole camera photograph of the Sun’s tracks over a 6-month period. Tune in to Radio Solent at 4:55 p.m. to listen in 🙂
Simon Parkin showed the New Forest Observatory “37” cluster image on his Meridian Weather slot last night. The 37 cluster is an amazing asterism in the constellation Orion which is now crossing our southern horizon during the evening. Thank you Simon for once again choosing an NFO image for your weather slot 🙂
Simon Parkin used a New Forest Observatory image of the Orion nebula on last night’s Meridian Weather programme. As you will know, Orion is crossing the southern horizon now and is due south around 9:00 p.m. It won’t be too long before it has disappeared into the West for another year – and I haven’t had much chance of imaging in this region this year due to the atrocious weather 🙁 Lucky we U.K. deep-sky imagers have almost infinite patience!
You can see a short Video from last night’s Meridian Weather on here – copyright Meridian ITV – after a bit of experimentation I managed to get the video properly rendered 🙂
The 6-month pinhole camera image shown below made an appearance on last night’s Meridian Weather with Simon Parkin. Actually came out well on the TV – congratulations to the technical team there at Meridian – and thank you Simon 🙂
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