New Forest Observatory ®

Jack Szostak presented a talk titled “The origin of life on Earth” which I personally found one of the best of the whole conference.  It was a bit unsettling for me though as for the first time I actually felt that life might not be that common throughout the Universe and that it might just be possible that we are the only life around.  I had not thought or considered this possibility before as I always thought that life is teeming throughout the Universe.  But when you consider that all life on this planet is based on just one immensely complex molecule, and that there must have been literally billions and billions of different precursor molecules that did not lead to life – then you start to view things in a totally different way.  Richard Dawkins too felt (like I used to) that unless the occurence of life was an incredibly low probability event, then there should be plenty of life elsewhere in the Universe.  I am now starting to think that life is not only a low probability event but that it is close to a zero probability event.

As Arthur C Clarke said, we may be the only intelligent life form in the Universe, or there may be others out there somewhere – whichever case is true, both have incredible repercussions.

Richard Dawkins presented a very enjoyable talk titled “Exobiology and Religion” at the Starmus Festival on Tenerife.

Nobel Laureate and astrophysicist George Smoot gave a talk titled “Signals from the beginning” at the Starmus Festival, Tenerife.  Garik – how on Earth did you get all these megastars to come along?

The coach driver took a stop here on our way up to the Teide Observatories and Noel Carboni snapped this one when I wasn’t looking 🙂  Nice picture Noel.

Noel Carboni got this one of me in front of the Observatories at the Teide Observatories site in the Teide National Park, Tenerife.  A glorious day like every day spent on Tenerife – what a place for Sun lovers 🙂

It is evening and the Sun is setting fast now.  Having disturbed Brian’s peaceful contemplation of the beautiful Sunset behind the distant caldera I added insult to injury by getting a photo opportunity in as as well.  Sorry Brian 🙂

Alex Cherney won the astrophotography competition with a stunning time-lapse sequence taken in the Australian outback.  As a prize Alex not only received a trip to the Starmus Festival, he also got an hour’s imaging time on the biggest telescope in the world – the GTC on La Palma.  And no I was not the slightest bit jealous or envious as I let Alex know through the whole of the Festival 🙂

Congratulations Alex – I look forward to seeing your image of the Arp galaxy.

A star party was held at the Parador Turismo hotel in the Teide National Park.  Brilliant – I’ll be able to get some great shots of the Scorpius region.  So here is a single sub from the Canon 5D MkII.  What’s that running along the edges of the hills?  Yep – good old light pollution.  O.K. so it was a night of bad seeing (couldn’t even see the Milky Way) as the air was clagged with Sahara dust – but it shows the problems you can encounter in what’s meant to be one of the better observing spots on the planet 🙁

I said that Garik Israelian had assembled an unbelievable lineup of mega-celebrities!  What do you make of this then?

On the left we have Bill Anders, Apollo8 astronaut who had just given a talk on “Early American Space Program”.

In the centre we have Jim Lovell, Apollo13 astronoaut, who of course gave a talk titled “Houston.  We have a problem”.

On the right is Apollo 16 astronaut Charlie Duke who gave a talk titled “Apollo: More than an adventure”.

This image was taken at question time immediately after the Apollo astronauts had given their very interesting accounts.  It felt surreal then, it feels even more surreal now sitting in my study writing this up back in the U.K.