{"id":42511,"date":"2023-03-23T09:52:45","date_gmt":"2023-03-23T09:52:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcskyatnight\/?post_type=purple_issue&p=42511"},"modified":"2023-03-23T10:11:10","modified_gmt":"2023-03-23T10:11:10","slug":"inside-the-sky-at-night-19","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcskyatnight\/2023\/03\/23\/inside-the-sky-at-night-19\/","title":{"rendered":"Inside The Sky at Night"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The Sky at Night <\/em>TV show, past, present and future<\/strong><\/p>\n\n

Inside The Sky at Night<\/span><\/h2>\n\n

As this month\u2019s show looks at exoplanets, Emma <\/strong>Johanna <\/strong>Puranen <\/strong>reflects on how alien worlds bring science and science fiction together <\/p>\n\n

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An artist\u2019s interpretation of a world with three moons and two suns. Emma examines where science ends and fiction begins in works portraying fictional planets <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n

In just a generation, humanity has gone from knowing of a handful of planets \u2013 those in our Solar System \u2013 to confirming the existence of over 5,000. While many of these newly discovered exoplanets remain invisible, detected not from their own light but through their effects on their host star, that hasn\u2019t stopped scientists and artists alike from understanding and imagining them not as mere data points but as fully-fledged worlds. <\/p>\n\n

My own love story with exoplanets began in a car park atop Kitt Peak, a mountain in the Arizona desert that\u2019s home to around two dozen telescopes. It was July 2013 and I was a teenager at Astronomy Camp, using the Kitt Peak Visitor Center\u2019s Roll Off Roof Observatory to observe a transit of TrES-3b, a puffy gas giant planet with a blisteringly short year of just 31 hours. As the telescope imaged the star, I went outside and laid down on the asphalt, which still warmly radiated the heat from the day. I\u2019d never been to a dark-sky site before. Seeing the stars in all their glory, I felt dizzy, like I had to clutch at the ground around me or else I\u2019d fall up into the heavens. As I lay, I thought of \u2018my\u2019 hot Jupiter out there, passing between us and its sun. I wondered how many other stars in my view hosted invisible planets. I wondered what they would look like from orbit, or from their surfaces, if they had them. I wrote stories in my head about these new types of worlds. <\/p>\n\n

A meeting of minds <\/strong><\/h4>\n\n

Nearly 10 years (and 4,000 confirmed exoplanets!) later, I am a PhD student at the University of St Andrews Centre for Exoplanet Science. My research is interdisciplinary; I study portrayals of exoplanets in science fiction. In particular, I use data science methodology to look at how scientific concepts like exoplanets flow from scientists to the public through the intermediary of science fiction. Building up an entire world, from its physical environment to its biology (if it has any), is a labour-intensive process, and authors often do a lot of research. I consider questions like: where do writers get their scientific information from? How do they make decisions on where to remain scientifically accurate and where to make things up? What might science fiction look like if the writer had a dedicated science consultant?<\/p>\n\n

And so I conceived a project. I paired scientists in fields from astronomy to earth sciences with writers from the university\u2019s School of English. Each pair created a science fiction story based on the scientist\u2019s research. Through questionnaires filled out by all the participants, I learned about their thought process as they constructed their worlds. Participants expressed how they wanted their stories to inspire readers to go and learn about strange and exciting new exoplanet findings. They also wanted to convey the deep sense of reaching into the unknown that is palpable for anyone involved in exoplanet science. The resulting anthology, Around <\/em>Distant <\/em>Suns, <\/em>features a diverse array of worlds, from a planet covered in sentient mist to one where it rains graphite, and another that is the rocky core of a gas giant that has had its atmosphere stripped. <\/p>\n\n

Most importantly, the collection highlights the ways we all yearn to engage with exoplanets. These worlds represent the big questions that all of us \u2013 scientists, artists and everyone else \u2013 are asking: what is out there, past the edge of the known? With every new planet, we are closer to knowing. <\/p>\n\n

<\/p>\n\n

\n\n
\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n

Emma Johanna Puranen is a PhD researcher with the St Andrews Centre for Exoplanet Science<\/p>\n\n

<\/p>\n\n

<\/div>\n\n
<\/div>
\n

Looking back: The Sky at Night <\/h4>\n\n\n\n

11 April 1981<\/strong><\/strong><\/h5>\n\n\n\n
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Voyager 1 image of Saturn\u2019s moon Mimas, November 1980<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

On the 11 April 1981 episode of The <\/em>Sky <\/em>at <\/em>Night, <\/em>Patrick Moore looked towards the moons of Saturn. The previous November, Voyager 1 had given humanity its first close-up look at these frozen worlds, and the show aired just as NASA had begun to publish maps created from its images. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Voyager 1 captured the surfaces of Tethys, Mimas, Rhea, Dione and Enceladus. As most of the moons were imaged from over 100,000km away, only major features were obvious, but they did reveal a large crater on Mimas (giving it a striking resemblance to the Death Star from Star <\/em>Wars). <\/em>Fortunately, Voyager 2 would be able to give them all a second look when it arrived in the system that August. Voyager 1 did pass much closer to one other moon \u2013 Saturn\u2019s largest, Titan \u2013 but its thick, haze-filled atmosphere blocked the view from its optical cameras. It found that the moon was 5,150km across, making it the second-largest in the Solar System (after Jupiter\u2019s Ganymede), and slightly bigger than the planet Mercury. It also found the surface pressure was 1.6 times that of Earth and contained organic chemicals like ethane and acetylene, but was a frigid 180\u00baC. At that temperature, it could well be possible for liquid methane lakes and rivers to exist on the surface, but planetary scientists would have to wait until the Cassini\u2013Huygens probe arrived in 1997. Using its radar, that craft was able to pierce the haze and finally map out Titan\u2019s river-carved surface.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/section>\n\n

The Sky at Night <\/strong>
APRIL <\/strong><\/h4>\n\n

Searching for Alien Life <\/strong>The launch this April of the JUICE mission to Jupiter and its icy moons marks a new era in the search for habitable conditions beyond our planet. The <\/em>Sky <\/em>at <\/em>Night <\/em>meets scientists who are collecting samples from Mars, exploring the Jovian system and beyond to find out how we\u2019re looking for extraterrestrial life \u2013 and whether we\u2019ll know when we\u2019ve found it. <\/p>\n\n

BBC<\/strong> Four, 10 <\/strong>April, <\/strong>10pm (first repeat will be on <\/strong>BBC<\/strong> Four, 13 <\/strong>April, <\/strong>7pm) Check <\/strong>www.bbc.co.uk\/skyatnight<\/a> <\/strong>for <\/strong>more <\/strong>up-to-date <\/strong>information<\/strong><\/p>\n\n

\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n

Find out more about ESA\u2019s JUICE mission to explore Jupiter\u2019s icy moons here.<\/a> <\/p>\n\n

<\/p>\n\n

PHOTOS: DOTTEDHIPPO\/ISTOCK\/GETTY IMAGES, NASA\/JPL, NASA\/ESA<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Sky at Night TV show, past, present and future <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":42506,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ub_ctt_via":"","purple_page_number":"18","purple_custom_meta_purple_page_number":"18","purple_seq_number":"1","purple_custom_meta_purple_seq_number":"1","purple_source_article":"article_18-1.xml","purple_custom_meta_purple_source_article":"article_18-1.xml","purple_source_issue":"April-2023","purple_custom_meta_purple_source_issue":"April-2023","purple_external_id":"April-2023-18-1","purple_custom_meta_purple_external_id":"April-2023-18-1","purple_issue_code":"|0000086563||","purple_custom_meta_purple_issue_code":"|0000086563||","purple_android_product":"com.im.skyatnight.215","purple_custom_meta_purple_android_product":"com.im.skyatnight.215","purple_ios_product":"com.im.skyatnight.215","purple_custom_meta_purple_ios_product":"com.im.skyatnight.215","purple_web_product":"","purple_custom_meta_purple_web_product":"","purple_publication_id":"075fab74-0a21-4201-866a-899d6c41c40c","purple_migrated":"","kt_blocks_editor_width":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[14],"featured_image_src":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/77\/2023\/03\/d61cf0e1-20b1-42e7-91c3-5a08ea08a4f0.jpg","author_info":{"display_name":"importmanagerhub@sprylab.com","author_link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcskyatnight\/author\/importmanagerhubsprylab-com\/"},"acf":{"readingTimeMinutes":"6","apple_news_title":""},"uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/77\/2023\/03\/d61cf0e1-20b1-42e7-91c3-5a08ea08a4f0.jpg",2048,1035,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/77\/2023\/03\/d61cf0e1-20b1-42e7-91c3-5a08ea08a4f0-150x150.jpg",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/77\/2023\/03\/d61cf0e1-20b1-42e7-91c3-5a08ea08a4f0-300x152.jpg",300,152,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/77\/2023\/03\/d61cf0e1-20b1-42e7-91c3-5a08ea08a4f0-768x388.jpg",768,388,true],"large":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/77\/2023\/03\/d61cf0e1-20b1-42e7-91c3-5a08ea08a4f0-1024x518.jpg",800,405,true],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/77\/2023\/03\/d61cf0e1-20b1-42e7-91c3-5a08ea08a4f0-1536x776.jpg",1536,776,true],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/77\/2023\/03\/d61cf0e1-20b1-42e7-91c3-5a08ea08a4f0.jpg",2048,1035,false]},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"importmanagerhub@sprylab.com","author_link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcskyatnight\/author\/importmanagerhubsprylab-com\/"},"uagb_comment_info":0,"uagb_excerpt":"The Sky at Night TV show, past, present and future","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcskyatnight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42511"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcskyatnight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcskyatnight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcskyatnight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcskyatnight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42511"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcskyatnight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42511\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":44074,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcskyatnight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42511\/revisions\/44074"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcskyatnight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/42506"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcskyatnight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42511"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcskyatnight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42511"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcskyatnight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42511"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}