The Wairarapa Dark Sky Reserve was delighted to host Professor Chris Lintott in June. Chris Lintott is professor of astrophysics at the University of Oxford, and co-presenter with Maggie Aderin-Pocock of the BBC astronomy programme The Sky At Night.
Originally presented by Patrick Moore in 1957, it is one of the longest running tv programmes in the world.
Chris Lintott was visiting New Zealand to work with collaborators at the University of Canterbury, and to speak at the Royal Astronomical Society of New Zealand (RASNZ) conference in Auckland.
RASNZ kindly supported his trip to the Wairarapa, where he gave a talk to about 40 people at the Royal Hotel in Featherston titled Weird Worlds.
The subject was exoplanets – planets that orbit stars other than the Sun – and he described how varied and strange some of these discoveries can be, ranging from groups of planets which have resonant orbits that can be rendered as musical chords, to giant rocky planets and worlds that orbit more than one star.
Prof Lintott also spoke about how anybody can participate in a range of exciting science projects.
Many of the interesting exoplanets he discussed had been found by citizen scientists participating in Zooniverse projects (https://www.zooniverse.org/).
Zooniverse is a web platform that Chris Lintott developed with other scientists that offers anybody the opportunity to take part in a wide range of scientific projects, ranging from astronomical objects – such as finding the signatures of exoplanets or unusual galaxies – to ecology (counting penguins) or a range of other areas, including climate, medicine and historical projects.
Participants receive some background and can practice on some examples before diving in to real scientific data. While computers are increasingly important for finding patterns in scientific datasets, he stressed that sometimes there is no substitute for a human eye and brain.
Professor Lintott was excited by the accreditation of South Wairarapa and Carterton as an International Dark Sky Reserve, and was impressed by the quality of the street lighting that has been installed by the councils, and by Waka Kotahi.
The ability to see stars in a dark sky is an important part of his interest in bringing astronomy to the widest possible audience.
