Category: Space

Categories
1950-1999 Space

Doctor Who Travels in Space, 1966

Sitting here, waiting fairly impatiently for the new series of Doctor Who to start next Saturday (it’s been so long), it seems like a good time to blow the dust from this vintage book. I imagine fellow Doctor Who fans would be as keen as me to have a look inside.

I’m sorry to say goodbye to the immense talent of Peter Capaldi, who feels so new to me still – yet the Zoe Ball-hosted special announcement programme seems like an awful long time ago now. And so we’re in the speculative hinterland of who the next Doctor may be. It’s decided now, of course, and it would be marvellous if somehow the surprise remained unspoilered until the regeneration, but that’s never going to happen. My choice, for what’s it’s worth – Ben Willbond all day long or, frankly, any single one of the Horrible Histories/Yonderland troupe. I’m sure any reader of this blog will be unsurprised to learn I am a massive Horrible Histories fan.

Anyway, on a grey December day in Manchester I found one of my best ever vintage book finds – the Doctor Who Travels in Space Painting Book. A colouring book dating from 1966 and William Hartnell days, wrapped in a plastic bag stuck down with sellotape which had obviously not been removed for decades. I had to buy it just to open that seal and have a peep.

Thanks to that plastic bag it was in fabulous condition for a 50 year old colouring book, the cover still vivid, and only one page coloured in. So here it’s is, and it’s not just pictures, it’s a story.

The robot destruction scene isn’t very “New Who”, is it?

I love that it was published in Manchester too – unlike the Doctor, it never travelled far.

Categories
1900-1949 2000 onwards Space

My Favourite Photographs – 1891, 1925, 1949 and 2014

Edwin Hubble

After writing my recent post about The Edge of the Universe, I was thinking about one of my heroes, Edwin Hubble. He’s (kind of) responsible for two of my all-time favourite photographs.

Firstly, the lad himself. Hubble, looking every inch the gentleman scientist, pipe in mouth, looking through the 48″ Schmidt Telescope at Palomar Observatory, 1949. This photo feels to me like the past and the future colliding.

Edwin Hubble
Edwin Hubble

And then there’s this, the Hubble Ultra-Deep Field image, produced by the Hubble Space Telescope. It’s not exactly a photo, but an image put together from a lot of pieces of information. It was created from data gathered in 2003-04, but was released most recently in June 2014 – the new image including the full range of ultraviolet to near-infrared light for the first time. It’s as mind-bending as it’s possible for a picture to be. This is only a small area of space, and yet it contains about 10,000 galaxies. And the light from the galaxies stretches all the way back 13 billion years – some of these came into existence not that long after the Big Bang. The telescope was named after Hubble, and this image is an incredibly appropriate tribute to him, as the first man to realise that there were galaxies separate to our own and that what we thought was the whole universe was just our little Milky Way.

Hubble Ultra-Deep Field
Hubble Ultra-Deep Field

On a completely different vibe, here’s my favourite photo from my blog so far. A woman letting the darning fend for itself while she loses herself in a book – from The Mother’s Companion, 1891.

What is there to prevent a woman from enjoying a good book?

The Mother's Companion, 1891
The Mother’s Companion, 1891

And finally there’s this photo of Buster Keaton’s beautiful face, taken from Go West in 1925. What a unique talent this man had. If you haven’t seen his film Sherlock, Jnr, I would recommend it very highly. It’s hilarious, astounding and a beautiful piece of work, and it’s also my joint favourite film ever, along with 2001: A Space Odyssey. Back to the photo – his eyeliner, dark silent-film lips, the unsettlingly sinister look giving a slightly different take on his usual stone-face expression….it’s just perfect. We did have this picture up in the kitchen until my small son complained that it “freaked him out”.

Buster Keaton, Go West, 1925
Buster Keaton, Go West, 1925

History, comedy, space and reading – I think these pics pretty much sum me up.

Tell me or show me yours! Or send me a link and I’ll put them in a new post for you.

Categories
1900-1949 Ephemera Future Predictions Space

The Edge of the Universe, 1922

The Children's Newspaper, 10th June 1922

This is my copy of The Children’s Newspaper from June 10th, 1922. I confess to mainly buying it as that date is also my birthday. The June 10th bit anyway, not the 1922 part.

The Children's Newspaper, 10th June 1922
The Children’s Newspaper, 10th June 1922

A couple of interesting, on-the-brink-of-discovery, articles in this. Firstly this one, which talks of the difficulties before nuclear energy becomes possible:

The Children's Newspaper, 10th June 1922
The Children’s Newspaper, 10th June 1922

But this one I find fascinating, given just how near it lurks to a reality-altering discovery.

A very distant star cluster, N.G.C. 7006, had been observed by astronomers, and was thought to be 220,000 light years from Earth (it’s now measured as being 135,000 light years away). The Children’s Newspaper wonders if this, possibly the most distant thing yet seen, is actually on the edge of the universe. In a way they were right, given that the Milky Way was then actually the known universe – this star cluster is on the outskirts of our own galaxy. The concept of other galaxies was still undiscovered. But not for long. In fact, it was the very next year, 1923, that Edwin Hubble, one of my all-time heroes, concluded that the extremely distant Andromeda star cluster was actually the Andromeda galaxy. One of those shifts in perception that fundamentally change the way we view the universe as a whole, and an incredible mental feat.

He expanded our idea of what the universe is, and then followed that up in 1929 with the discovery that the universe was actually expanding to boot. Whaddaguy.

The Children's Newspaper, 10th June 1922
The Children’s Newspaper, 10th June 1922
Categories
1900-1949 2000 onwards Space

Solar Eclipse, 1927

Solar Eclipse, 1927

Tomorrow, there’s something that doesn’t happen every day – it’s a total eclipse of the sun.

I have read that Scotland will lose 98% of its sunlight (insert joke) and the lack of solar power across Europe will cause all kinds of disruption. But never mind that, I’m excited! I saw the last one on 11th August 1999 when most of Quiggins, the Liverpool alternative shopping arcade where I worked at the time, piled outside to not watch the sun through those little cardboard contraptions. It was very cloudy though so we didn’t need the cardboard things. I seem to remember it went a bit gloomy and that was it.

But there won’t be another on mainland Britain until 23rd September 2090, which means it’s almost certainly the last one we’ll see in our lifetimes. That’s a bit of a sobering thought, isn’t it? I remember thinking the same kind of thoughts about seeing Halley’s Comet when I was 11 – but that comes back in 2061 so there’s an outside chance of still being around at any rate.

In 1927 another total solar eclipse was due and my Grandad had to write a project about it as a 14 year old schoolboy. We’ve still got his exercise book:

Grandad's schoolbook, 1927
Grandad’s schoolbook, 1927

This was an particularly exciting total eclipse as it was the first one visible from the British mainland for 203 years. And especially so for a Lancashire schoolboy, as the North of England was the best place to see it.

There are a lot of clippings glued into his book. I am especially overjoyed that so many of them come from The Children’s Newspaper, which I have been reading a lot of recently:

The Children's Newspaper, 1927
The Children’s Newspaper, 1927

This is my favourite clipping. A cartoon showing the best places to see it – with Giggleswick in Yorkshire being the prime location. On the day, it was pretty cloudy and not much was seen, but the Astronomer Royal in Giggleswick was lucky, he was in one of the few places that saw the totality.

Solar Eclipse, 1927
Solar Eclipse, 1927

I’ve got my fingers crossed for tomorrow…

Categories
1900-1949 Space

Herschel’s Last Wish, 1940

PTO Magazine, 1940

A lovely clipping about the astronomer Herschel (most famous for his Uranus, of course). This is his supposed last wish on his death-bed, which was in Slough, 1822. All he wanted was to see the dark side of the moon.

PTO Magazine, 1940
PTO Magazine, 1940