My stargazing experience goes back a long time. My dad was a physics teacher and one day he brought a telescope home, and we set it up in the garden wondering what we should point it at. There was a bright object up in the sky, so we had a look, and it was Saturn, complete with all its rings. I thought ‘Wow! This is easy!’.
I bought my first telescope when I was 14 years old – nearly 40 years ago now which is scary – and did an O level in astronomy in my own time. As a result Patrick Moore signed and presented one of his books to me, and invited me for tea and telescopes at his house. My dad dropped me o and Patrick came bounding down the driveway in shorts and a bright red shirt with a great big hole in it. It was quite a sight to behold. I was there for hours, looking at his various telescopes in the garden. Then we had tea and cake in his study.
I came to Cambridge in 1979 to do my degree, then ended up working here in the computer industry. Astronomy was still my hobby, and I joined the Cambridge Astronomical Association and was elected chairman in 2004/5. It’s the largest group of its kind in the country. We run a Young Astronomers class twice a month, and public observing sessions every Wednesday from the Institute of Astronomy, starting up again in September once the nights get longer.
At the Varsity Masterclasses, people have dinner then come out onto the roof with a glass of wine. I do a little talk on how to find your way around the sky. We show them planets, galaxies, nebulae and all sorts. People go away saying they didn’t realise you could see so much from a rooftop in Cambridge. Last time we found Jupiter and its moons and a couple of galaxies, one of which had a supernova going o ff.
I get asked all sorts of questions. ‘Have you ever seen anything unusual?’ is a common one, and really means ‘Have you seen any aliens?’. The answer is no, I’ve never seen anything I can’t explain. But I think we will find life in the universe in the next 50 years. I did see a fireball last year, which shot across the sky and broke up into a shower of green sparks, that was amazing. And we did a late-night masterclass at the Varsity last summer during the Perseus meteor shower. As I was describing how the Earth was passing through the tail of a comet, right on cue the meteors started coming from behind me.
When I went to New Zealand I felt completely lost. If you look north, you can see the constellation of Orion, though it’s upside down. But in the other half of the sky I had no idea what I was looking at.
In 2012 I identified a new planet, which goes by the really stupid name of KIC9147029b. We’re now finding that all stars have planets, and you can search for planets yourself by looking for a star that’s slightly dimmed, caused by a planet going in front of it. I love astronomy; it’s a really fast-moving science which we can all participate in.
