Welcome back to the UK Space Agency blog. It’s almost the end of September (around 3 months to Christmas as I write!), the school holidays are over and most people are back at work or school. I hope everyone managed to take some sort of break over the summer and enjoy the longer daylight hours.
I was fortunate enough to spend some time staying with relatives in south west France in the Pyrénées. As always, there were plenty of opportunities for walking, photography and bird watching. I’d never seen vultures in the wild before so that was a treat. They really are huge!
During the break I spent a day at the Pic du Midi de Bigorre. With an altitude of almost 3,000m (how the Tour de France cyclists make it up and down the narrow mountain passes I don’t know), the views stretch for miles and I found myself for a change looking down rather than up to the vultures as they circled the lakes below.
The mountain is particularly famous for its observatory, which houses the largest telescope in France. Construction began in the latter half of the 19th century and the observatory has played its part in a number of key points in history. In the 1960s, NASA funded the installation of a telescope there to take detailed photographs of the Moon ahead of the Apollo missions. Also in the 1960s, astronomers working at the observatory managed to put together detailed analyses of the composition of the atmosphere of Mars and Venus. And in 1980, Saturn’s moon Helene was discovered by two astronomers using the Pic du Midi telescopes.
I didn’t have a chance to try the telescopes out for myself but the observatory does have an impressive visitor centre which walks people through the history of star gazing and planet watching. As well as admiring the large telescopes, I was particularly struck by a quote from Frédéric Mistral “tonight I wish to lose myself among the stars” … wouldn’t we all? While we might not all have the opportunity to train as astronauts, I know many people of all ages who would like the chance to travel into space. Standing on top of a tall mountain is, I suspect, as far as I will make it!
Back in the office our priority remains to prepare for the European Space Agency Ministerial Council meeting in November. Although this takes a lot of time we manage to fit other work around it. I’ll draw your attention in particular to the forthcoming World Space Week which runs from 4-10 October. This year we are hosting a series of public discussions on twitter to promote the UK space sector. These will be one hour ‘meet the expert’ twitter question and answer sessions where our current and new twitter followers will be invited to tweet questions about different space topics each day and receive answers from those working in that particular field in the space industry. I will be available on one of the days to lead a discussion about careers and look forward to hearing from people. Keep an eye on the website for full details in due course.
Here’s hoping that the autumn weather treats us kindly and thanks as always for reading.
