Mike Wilson

First picture in BBC Sky at Night Magazine

Mike — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 12:24:13 +0000

BBC Sky at Night Magazine decided to use one of my astro-images in their February 2012 magazine, which is out today. I’m chuffed!

(The winning image of the month was a beautiful shot of the terminator (edge) of the moon by Steve Loveridge. Well done, Steve!)

click to see a larger version on Flickr

I originally blogged this image back in September, here: Gamma Cygni (y Cyg) “Sadr” in Cygnus, which was a test of some new astrophotography equipment.

Galaxy Hunting

Mike — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 00:49:51 +0000

Just for fun I thought that I’d set my telescope up and instead of putting its time towards a project, I just pointed out from our own galaxy to see if I could spot other galaxies, far, far away.

You see, all the stars you see in the sky at night with your eyes are all in our galaxy – bar none. Almost all of the beautiful pictures of nebulae and interesting space scenes come from our own galaxy, the Milky Way, it’s all in here:

But of course, the galaxy that we find ourselves in isn’t alone. So looking up around 10/11pm to the East, you’ll see the constellation of Leo rising above the horizon. There are a lot of interesting things to see in Leo but I’m not interested in those objects for the moment.

Instead, I deliberately chose an area of the sky that is rather dull, just north of the unimaginatively named star system, “93 Leo”. It’s a double star (two suns orbiting each other) approximately mag 4.5. “Mag”, or “Magnitude” is a measure of the apparent brightness of an object and each point of magnitude is 100 times brighter (or dimmer) than the previous.

(93 Leo, at 4.5 mag is not visible to the naked eye from my location and has to be observed through strong filters to cut out the background noise).

I took six, fifteen minute exposures and combined them together, deducted flat, dark and bias calibration frames (to remove artefacts from the imaging process) and processed the image data and to my surprise I found several other distant and dim galaxies in the picture. I looked up all the galaxies in the area using Stellarium and have marked the location of the galaxies in the image:

NGC 3886: Mag 14
NGC 3875: Mag 15
NGC 3873: Mag 14
NGC 3861: Mag 14
NGC 3851: Mag 15
NGC 3845: Mag 15
NGC 3844: Mag 15
NGC 3840: Mag 14
NGC 3841: Mag 15
NGC 3842: Mag 13 (brightest)
NGC 3837: Mag 14
NGC 3860: Mag 14

These galaxies may seem insignificant, but that is merely the consequence of the vast cosmic distance of intergalactic space between the galaxies. There is a black hole at the centre of each galaxy, but the one at the centre of this image’s brightest galaxy (NGC 3842) is SUPERMASSIVE and has a mass of ten billion times the size of our sun.

It’s also amazing that this little unassuming mark, denoting the presence of NGC 3842 was caused by photons (like little balls of energy) of light that have travelled 320,000,000 light years. That is, they’ve been travelling in the freezing cold and black of space, hitting nothing (not even a speck of dust) and fell through my telescope, filter and then onto the camera and their journey was recorded.

The fossil record shows reptiles starting to evolve around 300 million years ago. By the time of the first reptiles the light from this particular distant galaxy had already been travelling for 20 million years.

Think of the odds!

Strange website traffic

Mike — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 16:06:21 +0000

Here’s a chart of all the unique traffic to this blog from December 2011, over the holiday season and into 2012. It’s interesting to see traffic fall off dramatically in the days leading up to Christmas and New Year. Boxing Day was the highest day for visitors and surprisingly around 530 people logged onto www.mikewilson.cc on Christmas Day!* Excluding the lowest and highest point, the range is (max: 650, min: 375) which is almost exactly the same range of visits as I had back in October (but now with more overall unique visitors). The slight upward trend in traffic is encouraging:

*A day is considered +/- 12 hours from GMT. As a lot of traffic comes from the US and Canada, they may be reflected a day earlier or later in the chart.

Rosette Nebula in Ha (Caldwell 49, NGC 2237, 2239, 2246)

Mike — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 12:49:59 +0000

(click to zoom!)

My latest image was taken last month, on the 12th December 2011. It’s shows a view of the Rosette Nebula in Hydrogen Alpha (656nm +/- 7nm). It’s a careful ‘slice’ of the full colour (white) light spectrum that appears in the deep red potion of the spectrum.

This shows clouds of gas, excited by heat and radiation from nearby stars, giving off a red light. I’ve turned the image black and white as it shows up the structure better.

“The cluster and nebula lie at a distance of some 5,200 light-years from Earth (although estimates of the distance vary considerably, down to 4,900 light-years.[3]) and measure roughly 130 light years in diameter. The radiation from the young stars excite the atoms in the nebula, causing them to emit radiation themselves producing the emission nebula we see. The mass of the nebula is estimated to be around 10,000 solar masses” – Wikipedia

I imaged this for the first time with exactly the same filter (using a 5” Newtonian telescope and a DSLR camera) back in March 2011.

Piss shit bum poo willy ass. What’s the fucking problem?

Mike — Sat, 31 Dec 2011 16:24:42 +0000

I’m a dad. My son is four and a half years old and he is one of the most well behaved and well mannered kids you’ll ever meet — and I’m serious about that. His teachers say that he is an absolute joy to have in their class. He’s kind and helpful to other people and constantly looking out for their welfare. When he’s upset he takes great care to explain the problem (“Daddy, I don’t like it when Johnny pulls my hair and that is why I don’t want to play with him tomorrow”) rather than throwing a typical tantrum. He’s quiet and (mostly) self controlled in public, whether in restaurants or when visiting people.

He’s also completely used to his mummy and daddy saying the occasional (or not-so-occasional) “naughty” word. He finds rude words amusing. Both his mummy and I are generally polite and refrain from swearing in polite conversation, however we haven’t sought to “protect” him from hearing certain words. Many people find some words cause them to experience strong negative emotions and we do not want our children to be raised – programmed – to respond with strong feelings of offense or upset because they heard a certain sound or saw an arrangement of letters.

Researchers at the University of Bristol determined that though verbal conditioning (a simple form of associating certain sounds with punishment) cause the sounds and letters that form rude words to be “directly associated with the emotional centres in the brain”. (Bowers, JS et al. 2011). The same applies to taboo words. Furthermore, the odd expletive can be psychologically helpful since we use them to help relieve pent-up feelings as well as to expand our vocabulary with additional emotional response. Timothy Jay (2009). Euphemisms (saying, “Damnit” instead of “Fuck”) had a similar, but reduced effect which begs the question as to why it could be considered socially acceptable to yell, “Ow!” instead of, “Damnit” and “Damnit” instead of “Fuck!”.

These ideas (or memes) are brainwashed into children (myself included) throughout childhood. The formula is this: Say a naughty word => receive punishment. The heavier the punishment, the stronger the neural pathways that cause strong emotions to be felt will be.

Swearing increases your pain threshold. (Richard S, et al. 2009). “Under certain conditions, swearing produces a hypoalgesic effect”. A simple test that demonstrates what we adults already probably know – if you take a bunch of college students and get them to put their hands into freezing cold water whilst simultaneously repeating either a neutral or a swear word, it is possible to withstand an extra 40 seconds of pain if repeating the swear word. Fuck me, that’s amazing. They did also respond that those who swear regularly received less pain relief than those who don’t. My tip is to choose your favourite profanity and when you next experience pain – shout it out as loudly as you can

Consider if you are a native English speaker. You think in your mind in English. If you are religious, you probably pray inside your head in English and if you are schizophrenic you probably hear voices in your head in English too. Our language impacts our thinking and if people avoid thinking or talking about certain topics (pain avoidance behaviour) it will discourage the natural process of critical thought and learning. Ergo, being scared of certain words will make you stupid. Holy shit, that’s smart!

Going back to my son, I was driving with him to visit my mum and dad last week. In the car we played a game, it went something like this:

Son: Hey Daddy?
Me: Yes, bug?

Son: You smell like a toilet!
at this point he is laughing hysterically

Me: Well…. *sounding stern*
…he’s looking worried now!
Me: …Well.. you smell like a toilet that hasn’t been flushed in days!
…he bursts out with infectious crackling laughter

Son: You smell like a toilet that hasn’t been flushed in days with shit in it!
This time, *I’m* the one laughing hysterically.. just signalling to turn off into my parent’s road
Son: Now daddy. You know that you cannot use these words at nana and granddad’s house. Alright daddy? Alright? We better now be on our best behaviour and not say any naughty words.

References:

1. Bowers JS, Pleydell-Pearce CW (2011) Swearing, Euphemisms, and Linguistic Relativity. PLoS ONE 6(7): e22341. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0022341 ( http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0022341

2. Jay, T. (2009). The utility and ubiquity of taboo words. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 4(2), 153-161

3. Stephens, R., Atkins, J., & Kingston, A. (2009). Swearing as a response to pain. NeuroReport, 00, 00

I’m looking forward to Christmas, but I’m not expecting a visit from Jesus

Mike — Sat, 24 Dec 2011 21:15:31 +0000

I wish you all a merry Christmas, happy holidays and a pleasant and relaxing week.

Wake me up after Christmas, k? Thx.

Why ICT in schools is shit (and how to fix it)

Mike — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 01:54:38 +0000

A government report was just recently published which tells us all what we already know about ICT in schools; it’s shit. Kids know more than the teachers, and that’s a testament to how luddite a typical teacher has become, not at how advanced our kids now are.

I’m a father now, and as a geek, everyone seems to assume that my son was born with an iPad in his hand. I’ve had at least twenty people ask me, not if he already has a mobile phone, but if it’s an iPhone or a Blackberry (no love for Android, then!). He’s just four and a half and already a master of Angry Birds and a veritable Fruit Ninja!

Now ICT has always been crap and I’m frankly surprised that it’s taken us over two decades to realise it. The solution to making it better has been under our noses for decades too. Let me explain…

Let me take you back over twenty years to when I was a kid in primary school. I grew up in Germany, but as an army child – educated in a military-run (but national curriculum) school in Germany in the 1980′s. It was, co-incidentally the time that the BBC had just chosen the “Micro” as the computer it was going to push a series of TV, radio and magazine programs out about and encouraged schools to buy them. And buy them they did, in droves.

My parents bought one. It was archaic and stayed with us throughout my childhood. No Nintendo entertainment system for me, my parents weren’t happy with our household having a C64, Amiga or any of those ‘games’ computers. No, for me it was monochrome joy and games such that they were came from days, weeks and sometimes months of painstaking copying of code from monthly magazines from the city’s newsagents. If I was lucky, I could type two or three thousands lines of code from a magazine without errors – although invariably there would be a print error and the finished game code wouldn’t run. Such is life. But if it worked, the result would be a card game, tetris or even… After an entire term of after school coding.. Elite! (A space ship trading game that started it all for me ).

That’s how I learned to code. Not really understanding what I was doing but going through the ropes all the same, simply to get what it was that I wanted (a game) required me to build it.

Later, back in England at secondary school around the time of my GCSE’s and A-Levels, I made some good friends who were also computer geeks. We’d hang around before and after school to use the school computers. Hacking, mostly. And mostly harmless.

We were spurred on – at first we wanted to find ways to hide our games, so we did. Then we wanted a method of ‘instant messenger’ (before such a thing existed), so we wrote one together. (we wrote out text files to a shared folder that we secretly created on a machine in the main computer office – clients would read and write these files). This made us happy and gave us a real rush. It was a thrill.

We moved on to bigger and bigger projects – if we could remote chat, then we could remote CONTROL, and our chat client became a Trojan, a back door on every computer in the school and the sixth form college. We got some funny sound files and a speech engine and made our chat client play these sounds – at full volume anywhere from the library, to first year ICT classes, to the headmistresses office. It was THRILLING. And it got us in trouble a LOT.

This leads me to recount the only moment that I was officially in deep trouble at school. It was via our remote control client that another student managed to obtain (a few years under us) and officially script-kiddied our work to hack the salaries files of all the teachers. I was one of those who got the blame and spent an hour getting screamed at after school by our Irish deputy headmaster. After he finished venting his frustration at his salary was now public knowledge (again, not my fault), he offered me a taxi ride home. I didn’t accept, but instead did my usual 3.5mile walk home, deeply upset. That incident made me hate him and wasn’t at all a factor in future pranks however all four of us involved were banned from using the computer rooms. At least, officially

Needless to say, ICT classes throughout this time was a complete bore. We had to work through worksheets given by teachers who had clearly never even touched a computer before. It’s frustrating, and I feel for kids in a similar situation to the one that I’ve been through. Looking at comments coming from kids at school on Twitter, it seems the more things change, the more they stay the same.

So why am I telling you all this?

Because I know what we can do to fix the problem and I know that what we are currently doing is still pretty shit.

I saw a report by the BBC today and it shows a new charity whose idea of bringing ICT to schools is to teach kids how to “Make apps”. Oh my God, can you honestly think of anything more crude? It’s almost as if “Apps” has become the new blog, or the new “Web 2.0″. Are those kids actually MAKING apps? Would any of them be able to tell us the difference between a Model, a View and a Controller? Could any describe the benefits of the Singleton pattern?

Of course not.

But they could all tell you the best way to conceal porn on an iPhone and the most ten most amusing things to do with Skype in a classroom. Some of them might even have a genuine passion for, say, World of Warcraft, and already be writing custom excel spreadsheets to calculate the most cost effective farming runs or their own apps to monitor their gaming networks while they’re at school – daydreaming about how they’re going to master a new dungeon instance when they get home.

The key, then, dear Ofsted is to meet the kids where they are. Teach everyone why critical thinking is important, show them how technology can improve lives. And then take the ones who care and rather than give them programming lessons – allow them to use your equipment.

Bill Gates would never have gotten anywhere unless he had access to a top of the range programmable computer at his school (as donated by his dad) and I would never have gotten this far if my school hadn’t at least inadvertently given me a hundred-computer playground with which to tend and abuse to my young geek heart’s content.

Inspire them all, then give the ones who want to learn the tools, the equipment, the resources and the time to do something.

Just don’t be angry if they build something inappropriate or hack your accounts.

You have been warned.

Piss shit bum poo willy ass. What’s the fucking problem?

Deep sky panorama

Mike — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 16:43:19 +0000

What could be more awesome than a deep sky image?

Flickr: A panorama in Orion. The Horsehead and Flame Nebula on the left and “Great Nebula” on the right.

A deep sky panorama!

The above image was captured in one night from under urban, light polluted skies during an exceptionally clear evening. It was a frosty and chilly night and the air was still, making very good conditions for astronomical observation and imaging.

This is my first attempt at a mosaic, it’s made from two pictures sewn together in Photoshop (two layers blended together around the middle). I’ve over-processed the Great Nebula and lost some of its detail. It can be fixed later.

A close-up of the flame and horse nebula (taken from the panorama)

A close-up of The Great Nebula in Orion (taken from the panorama).
(I’m not happy with how this came out).

The Great Nebula in Orion is a cloud of energised gas and dust that is condensing – in parts – in on itself. When a ball of sufficient mass and pressure has built up to a critical level, atomic fusion occurs and the ball of dust and gas becomes a great ball of fire. The ball of fire we call a ‘star’ (which is the same as a ‘sun’) and it is these young hot stars that are blowing away the surrounding gas and dust and that’s how the Great Nebula gets it’s blown-out shape.

Once ‘born’, the stars don’t stay in the nebula for long. They move out and away to live out their lives. When the bigger stars die, they explode and their matter is what makes everything else in the universe that isn’t hydrogen or helium. All that solid stuff you see around you (including you!) was made from particles forged inside a very large sun (much bigger than ours) and thrown out into the cosmos way before even our sun was formed. It’s amazing that we can know all this, through the scientific method.

I’m just enjoying taking pictures of it all happening

Photography of the night

Mike — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 02:32:53 +0000

Behold my latest ThoughtfulGeek video, “Photography of the night”. I thought it would be fun to put together a short fun video showing what I get up to at night sometimes…

The following images are included in this video:

M45 – The Pleiades (Seven Sisters)

The Horsehead (IC434) and Flame Nebula (NGC 2024)

M35 and M36 in Auriga

The Flame Nebula (IC 405) and an orange companion nebula (IC 410)

M31 – The Andromeda Galaxy

Key words to learn at home

Mike — Sun, 13 Nov 2011 21:06:48 +0000

We’ve just been going through, ‘key words to learn at home’ from our son’s school.