To mark our 200th issue, Pete Lawrence and Paul Abel sat down to discuss some of the highlights to have graced the night skies since the magazine’s launch

Pete: BBC Sky at Night Magazine started in the middle of 2005, quite a while ago in terms of astronomy. The more you think about it, the more events you realise there have been since that first issue.

Paul: I’d like to kick off with something recent: Comet NEOWISE, which was a spectacular naked-eye object seen during summer 2020. This was one of the best naked-eye comets since Hale-Bopp for UK skies because it was really well placed. It coincided with lockdown so we were all at home and the weather was really good. We had an unprecedented long spell of clear nights and I think NEOWISE was as good as Hale-Bopp in the 1990s. It was that long since I’d seen a bright, nakedeye comet. I know we had McNaught – that was a good comet. You saw the tail of that from Selsey, Pete, but it didn’t actually climb high up. NEOWISE was the first one we’ve had for a while.

Pete: Yes, C/2006 P1 McNaught, that is going back a bit –I think that was 2007. That was impressive; I took a good photograph of it during daylight. It went into a spectacular outburst when it passed into the southern skies and the tail exhibited those striations you get, called synchronic bands. Judging by some of the stars I could see in the wonderful pictures taken from the Southern Hemisphere, I figured out that I might also be able see some of the bands from the Northern Hemisphere. I went down to the beach at Selsey [in West Sussex], where I lived, and was able to pick some of them up. But the comet that really stands out for me is one that had an outburst at the end of 2007 into 2008, and that is Comet 17P/Holmes.

Paul: Yes, it was quite greenish and it looked rather like a fried egg!

Pete: I remember observing that with Patrick Moore and he said, “It’s just peculiar.” He was right, it was – it looked like a dinner plate!

Paul: It dimmed quite rapidly. The larger the comet got, the fainter it became. So you had a situation where it was really quite a large diameter in the sky, but it was almost impossible to pick up visually. Although long time-scale pictures brought it out well.

Pete: Yes, indeed. Actually, people often ask me about the best things I’ve ever seen in the night sky and it’s difficult to say one particular thing. But one thing does stand out; do you recall the time we went to Kielder Observatory in Northumberland?

Paul: Oh, that was so cold. It was so cold.

Pete: We went there to see an asteroid that was doing a close pass of Earth. It was quite windy and there were very dark skies. I had my binoculars and managed to locate the area where it was. The asteroid was called 2012 DA14 and that was 15 February 2013. I remember being able to spot it because it moved against the star field. It really struck me that I’d never really seen a natural object other than a meteor or the aurora physically moving against the stars. It stood out and it really stayed with me.

Paul: I remember that. We were filming The Sky at Night and you directed us how to find it. Jon Culshaw was there and I think all three of us did manage to get it in binoculars at one point, but I lost it. It was passing near Ursa Major and I remember you saying, “Quick now, it’s just near the Plough.” So I looked and I found it. Then somebody asked me something and I turned away momentarily and lost it! I couldn’t recover it after that, but what surprised me was the speed at which it was moving because I thought it was going to be much slower in the sky, but it turned out to be quite a speedy object.

Pete: Yes, it was indeed.

Paul: Do you remember driving up there? I don’t drive. Patrick thought the idea of me behind the wheel of a car was far too terrifying, so we had a gentlemen’s agreement that I’d never learn to drive. Pete, you always drive and I think it’s fair to say that you’re quite dependent on the satnav.

Pete: Oh yes.

Paul: When we got up to Kielder we were looking for the filming location and it wasn’t in the satnav. Do you remember we asked that chap in the pub and he gave directions that were really good, except he missed a right turn by the river and a left going up the hill. It’s the first time I’ve ever seen you really get cross. We’d driven down to the wilderness and I said, “Pete, I don’t think this is right.” And you just said, “I can tell this isn’t right, you idiot!” I deserved that, but it was quite amusing.

Pete: I say that to you all the time!

Paul: And you’re still dependent on the satnav. Anyway, my next choice would be the Mars opposition in 2020. We’ve both seen a lot of Mars oppositions, but this was special for me because it was the first year I had my own large telescope. You know how it is: you spend a long time with a 6- to 8-inch telescope, but after about a decade you’re ready to move on. I have access to the University of Leicester telescope, but it’s a big turning point in your observing career when you have your own big telescope. I’d just got a 12-inch Newtonian and we had a run of clear nights towards opposition. I had some of the most fantastic views of Mars I’ve had in my life. I was able to use powers of 600x magnification and I made 78 colour drawings of Mars. I also made two maps and charted the dust storm that erupted. It’s the most intense period of work I’ve ever done on the Red Planet because I had access to a big telescope.

Pete: Once you’ve got a good run, it draws you in. I remember one opposition when I got into a similar state. I could set up the telescope quickly outside and off I’d go. Some nights you had crystal clear, steady seeing, but I had an issue with my imaging chip because there was a mite living on it.

Paul: That could only happen to you!

Pete: The creature obviously liked to bathe in the light from Mars because every time I put the telescope on the planet, it would crawl across the chip and sit right in the middle of the image. I’d have to continually move the image around on the sensor to try and avoid this creature getting in the way! But talking of the planets takes me right back to 2007, in the magazine’s early years, because there were a number of interesting lunar occultations at that time. On 2 March 2007, Saturn was grazed by the Moon. From my location, only part of the planet was actually clipped by the edge of the Moon, which led to some nice images. On 22 May that same year, Saturn was properly occulted and then on 18 June – again in 2007 – Venus was occulted by the Moon. We had a really good run of planets disappearing behind the Moon’s disc, which hasn’t really happened since. Actually, something to look forward to at the end of 2022 will be two occultations of Uranus and an occultation of Mars.

Paul: I remember those occultations because I was quite an active observer in the late ’90s. Then, in 1999 I went to university and you know how it is when you go to college, you kind of lose touch with things. I lost touch with amateur astronomy and it wasn’t until my PhD in 2005 that I came back to it, when BBC Sky at Night Magazine had just started. I picked up this new magazine and that’s when I got going again. Not long after that we had all those astronomical events. I don’t think we met until 2007, though.

Pete: It seems like a lot longer.

Paul: Moving on, my next choice includes the pair of us. It was the trip on the Boudicca with you, me and Jon Culshaw to see the total eclipse in 2015 near the Faroe Islands. This was the first time I had ever seen a total eclipse of the Sun and it nearly didn’t happen. Do you remember the weather? How touch and go it was?

Pete: I took a bit of a responsibility there because I had a good rapport with the captain, and the first thing he said to me was, “Before we do anything else, we just agree there is no blame, okay?” So he obviously knew what the Norwegian Sea was like in March! The night before the eclipse I saw a band of weather expanding and the location we were headed for would have been underneath it. I emailed him to say we needed to go further north and, next morning, it was like he’d put his foot on the accelerator. The ship was just pounding through the waves. I can remember getting up and there was thick snow coming down on the deck of the ship and people walking past going, “Don’t worry, Pete, it’s not your fault.” I thought, “But it hasn’t even happened yet!” As we got closer, the clouds began again to break up and we got to see the whole of totality.

Paul: Do you remember there were a couple of other ships that stayed behind? They didn’t move and they were clouded out. We were so lucky, we were among the few people to see it. I can still picture it in my mind’s eye – it’s almost an absurd image of a brilliant black circle. It was only 10am in the morning and afterwards we had champagne and celebrated.

Pete: Absolutely. We’ve seen a lot of eclipses over the 200 issues of the magazine, but my first proper one wasn’t a total eclipse, it was an annular eclipse in Madrid that I saw while filming with The Sky at Night on 3 October 2005. We had decided to set ourselves up in Parque Tierno Galván, which has a planetarium in it, and we picked our spot at some ridiculous hour in the morning before the Sun had come up. We got to see a lovely annular eclipse and then the next year, on 29 March 2006, I took a group of about 1,600 people to Turkey, where we were treated to the beautiful sight of a spectacular total eclipse – my first proper view of a total eclipse of the Sun. I can still remember that feeling of looking up at the eclipse and feeling the cold of the Moon in front of the Sun. I couldn’t help but think, “Crikey, we’re pretty insignificant on this planet.” We’ve had a number of lunar eclipses too. Two recent ones stand out pretty well for me. I remember one on 28 September 2015, which we saw from a mutual friend’s meadow in Ham, just outside Selsey. I decided to take quite a lot of equipment to get multiple shots and I drove us over there, dropped all the kit off and then went back home and picked up another car load of kit.

Paul: I should point out that all I had was a notebook and a pencil! You’re the one that filled the car up. Do you remember how low the car was?

Pete: Then we had another lunar eclipse on 21 January 2019. I picked you up and we both came back to Selsey and it was beautifully clear.

Paul: It was also really cold! As I recall, the colour was quite strong: there was a good orange tint to the Moon. It was also quite a dark eclipse. They always vary in terms of how orange or how dark the Moon goes during totality. We made lots of cups of tea because it was so cold.

Pete: Not as cold as the one I did for The Sky at Night on Selsey beach during the 2010 winter solstice.

Paul: I remember you went down and did it on your own and you were freezing to death.

Pete: The sea was up on the sea wall and it froze. It was rock hard. I don’t think I’ve ever been so cold in my life.

Paul: Another event that we both saw was that very unusual storm on Saturn in December 2010. Do you remember that?

Pete: Was that the Dragon Storm?

Paul: Yes, the Dragon Storm. Saturn has these big, bright oval storms. And what normally happens is about every 30 years a bright oval erupts in Saturn’s equatorial zone and then goes back to normal. But this one started off in Saturn’s north temperate zone. It was first detected on 5 December. The Cassini spacecraft was in orbit around Saturn and managed to record the storm breaking out, and the rapid thunder and lightning. It extended around the north temperate zone and became almost like a comet. Typically, it was quite cloudy in Leicester that year, so my first observation of it wasn’t until later, about 12 May, with my 8-inch reflector. I put a blue filter on and it was very unusual. It stands out in my mind as quite an out of the ordinary event on Saturn.

Pete: That reminds me, was it 2010 when Jupiter lost one of its main belts, the South Equatorial Belt (SEB)? It just suddenly disappeared, didn’t it?

Paul: That’s right. Jupiter undergoes this phenomena called an SEB fading and revival, when the South Equatorial Belt fades away and the Great Red Spot becomes dark and intense. Sometimes, a year or more later, you get eruptions breaking out where the South Equatorial Belt used to be, then they join up and the belt reforms. It’s most mysterious.

Pete: I also wanted to bring up transits. We had a transit of Venus back in 2004, but we also had one in 2012 on 6 June. That was the time when The Sky at Night went to Svalbard in the upper reaches of Norway, to try and get a view of it, since it would be the last transit of Venus we will see in our lifetimes. On the day before it was an absolutely beautiful clear sky and I thought, “Yeah, we’re going to get this, no problem at all.” I managed to get my telescope set up outside the accommodation block on very rough gravel. I remember because I was kneeling down on it with a cloth over my head. We did manage to get a lovely view of the transit, even though it completely clouded over the next day.

Paul: I remember that 2012 transit of Venus because I stayed behind with Patrick Moore and we were among very few observers who actually viewed it from the UK. Jon Culshaw, myself and a number of others went down to Selsey beach with Patrick, pushing him in his chair, and it was around four or five in the morning. Just at the right moment we had a big gap in the clouds and we were able to see the transit. Patrick observed the transit of Venus through the telescope and I think that must have been the last astronomical event he ever saw. We were so lucky to have been able to see it because not long afterwards the sky clouded over again and we decamped. I think a few people were quite surprised to be offered champagne and cake with Patrick around six in the morning, but it felt like quite an achievement.

Pete: Looking back, it’s been a pretty spectacular 200 issues’ worth of events. I’m looking forward to what the next 200 issues will bring.

Paul: Yes, who knows what we’ll see. There are all sorts of fascinating observational things to come. Maybe in one of the next 200 issues we’ll have news of a discovery of life on Mars or Europa. Anything could happen!

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Listen to the full recording of Pete and Paul’s stargazing highlights chat (see ‘Bonus content’ for details)

Photos: POL SOLE SALLES/M-GUCCI/ISTOCK/GETTY IMAGES, PETE LAWRENCE, MALCOLM PARK SCIENCES/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO, PAUL ABEL, JIM WALLING/ ALAMY STOCK PHOTO