What do Carrick-a-Rede Rope Bridge in Northern Ireland, Compton Bay on the Isle of Wight and Llynnau Cregennen in Snowdonia National Park in North Wales all have in common? They are just some of the top 10 places in the UK to do stargazing. That is according to astronomer and science communicator, Jenifer Millard, who has compiled the list together with some information about what you might be able to see from the locations with the naked eye, binoculars, or a telescope.
Millard also offers advice to ensure you have the most “epic experience” when stargazing, which include wrapping up warm, going on moonless nights and using a red-light torch to preserve your “dark adaption”. Millard compiled the list in partnership with the UK car manufacturer Jaguar Land Rover, but let’s hope you don’t need one of their vehicles to get there.
When gazing up at the stars, have you ever wondered if there is an alien civilization gazing back at us? And if there is, should we try to contact it? Some argue no, because we know what happened on Earth when technologically advanced societies conquered and subjugated others. I don’t subscribe to that view because I reckon any nearby advanced civilizations are already aware of our presence.
Broadcasting to the cosmos
Humans have sent messages out into space before – encoded in both in radio waves and on objects in spacecraft – and now Jonathan Jiang at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab and colleagues have proposed a new message that could be broadcast to the cosmos.
Their “Beacon in the Galaxy” (BITG) message is an updated and modernized version of the Arecibo Message. This used radio waves to beam simple descriptions of certain aspects of Earth and humanity to globular star cluster M13 in 1974. The BITG contains simple digital representations of things like the hydrogen spectrum, DNA and the human form. The message also contains information about where the Earth is and when the message was sent.
The team suggest that the message should be broadcast by the FAST radio telescope in China – and they have even worked out the best date and time to send the missive. Another option, they say, is to use the Allen Telescope Array in California. The team describes its proposal in a preprint on the arXiv server.
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