Wednesday, 20 November 2024

Wolf Hall and the Little Ice Age

If you have been watching the BBC TV programme Wolf Hall telling the story of Henry VIII and his chief minster Thomas Cromwell c1485-1540. Cromwell would become one of the most important people in ensuring that the English Reformation happened when the church broke from Rome.

But I want to talk about something else that was happening at the same time. I am talking about the weather. It was very cold.

The clothes that were worn by the rich people were very warm they were expensive, as they were entirely handmade and made from natural fibres, they would also take a long time to make. and as there were no cameras in those days, we must rely on paintings that were produced at that time. Poor people wore simple clothes made from woollen cloth.

Another reason that rich people are seen wearing these warm clothes is that there was no central heating in the buildings at this time and if you moved away from the fire which was the source of heat in a house it became very cold.

Why were the buildings so cold, they were big had high ceilings and insulation would not have been up to modern day standards. In addition the this the fact that the weather was simply very cold, I know that today we often talk about climate change and global warming. In the past there have been cool periods.

From around the year 1300 until around 1750 the Earth experienced what scientist call a ‘Little Ice Age’ It was much colder then than it is today. Temperatures did fluctuate a bit but it was either colder than today or much colder than today. Rivers in Europe regularly froze over. Everyone likes going to a fair, but during this little ice age it was so cold that the rivers froze. The ice on the rivers were so thick that ice fairs could be held  on rivers. We would be talking about ice many feet thick.

I don’t think we will see this in Wolf Hall but in 1536 King Henry VIII travelled from central London to Greenwich by Sleigh. A little later in 1564 Queen Elizabeth I took part in archery while standing on the river Thames.

There were many ideas put forward by people at the time, one idea was that it was all caused by witches. Today we can suggest other reasons. The Sun was a major contributing factor. We know that when there are very few sunspots to be seen on the Sun for a period of time then the temperature on the earth appears to drop. The surface of the Sun is about 5,800 degrees while the sunspots are cooler at around 4,500 degrees. As they are cooler, they appear darker. They are also areas of intense magnetic activity. There appeared to be fewer sunspots during the so-called little ice age.

Today we know that the Sun has a sunspot cycle which lasts 11 years. In other words, every 11 years we see lots of sunspots then the number falls away until the next cycle peaks. The sunspots can produce flares which fly into space and as they magnetically charged and crash into the earth’s magnetic field one by product, they produce are the Aurora Borealis or Northern Lights. We have seen a lot recently as the Sun is approaching sunspot maximum activity.

 It is not just visual observations of the sunspots that scientists observe, but also, they can study ice cores which can show how active or not the Sun at a particular point in time, which is why astronomers and scientists believe we experienced the little ice age. 

So, when you next watch Wolf Hall you can admire all the splendid clothes that people would have worn, but also remember, it was not just for prestige, but also to keep the cold out.  This was because of the period of time they were living in which today we know as the little ice age.

 


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Tuesday, 19 November 2024

The Frost Moon was spot on this year

The Full Moon in November is the Frost Moon and it has lived up to its name this year.

The names I use when I describe the full moons during a year are the ones that were given by the monks in monasteries over 1200 years ago. These names had to reflect the natural or religious cycle of events. November was the month when people would expect to see the first frosts of the year.

Today for reasons that I don’t quite understand we are using the much newer American names for the full moons, hence in the press the November full moon is called the Beaver Moon.

I think the old English names are the ones that I will keep using.



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The Astronomy Show wins award

 I am very proud to say that The Astronomy Show on Drystone Radio has won the Bronze Award in the specialist content category at the 2024 annual Community Radio Awards.



Monday, 18 November 2024

The Astronomy Show on Drystone Radio

 Join me, Martin Lunn MBE tonight and every Monday evening from 7.00 pm-9.00 pm on the Astronomy Show on Drystone Radio, probably the only regular astronomy show on any radio station in the country. 

I will take my weekly look at the night sky and look at all the latest news in astronomy. There will be the astronomical anniversaries this week plus the latest news from the astronomical societies in the north of England.



The Astronomy Show every Monday evening only on Drystone Radio live online at www.drystoneradio.com DAB radio in Bradford and East Lancashire, or 102 and 103.5 FM and can also be heard later on the Drystone Radio Podcast.

Sunday, 17 November 2024

The first comet discovered in Yorkshire

 Edward Pigott 1753-1825 together with John Goodricke 1764-1786 were who I called the Fathers of Variable Star Astronomy when I was Curator of Astronomy at the Yorkshire Museum in York. They worked together between 1781-1786. Pigott would also make another major contribution to astronomy. He was the first person to have discovered a comet from Yorkshire.

It was on the night of November 19th, 1783, that he observed what looked like a fuzzy patch in the constellation of Cetus the Whale. He discovered it through a telescope as it was too faint to be seen with the naked eye.

A comet is basically a dirty snowball travelling around the Sun. When it gets closer to the Sun it heats up and we are able to see a spectacular tail on the comet. At least we can with bright comets, most like comet Piggot are very faint.

Most of the important astronomers of the day confirmed the discovery. These included William Herschel who had discovered the planet Uranus in 1781, together with the important French comet hunters Charles Messier and Pierre Mechain.

During the rest of November and into December as the comet moved away from the Earth it got fainter, the last time it could be seen was December 21st, 1783.

Comets travel around the Sun in what astronomers call elliptical or egg-shaped orbits. Orbits. With this comet only having been observed for a short time astronomers could not work out when it would return to our part of the solar system again. The comet just disappeared.

One suggestion put forward sometime later in 1860 was that the comet might have a period of around 5.89 years when it can next be seen in the sky. Although many searches were undertaken nothing was seen of comet Piggot until January 5th, 2003, when it was seen on a photograph taken at the Lincoln Near Earth Asteroid Research LINEAR project. This is a project run between the United States Air Force and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Lincoln Laboratory. It was very faint and at first it was believed to be an asteroid. However, the photograph showed the object was fuzzy in nature meaning it was a comet. It was also thought to be in the right place where comet Piggot would be expected to be. The it was lost again.

 It was next seen on September 10th, 2009, by Richard Kowalski at the Cataline Sky Survey which is based close to the Steward Observatory Catalina Station near Tucson Arizona. It was around the same brightness as seen in 2003, still very faint. This comet has the distinction of being discovered then re discovered and the re re discovered. Astronomers now know that the comet returns to the sky and can be seen every 7.3 years. 

It was determined that this was comet Piggot but because it had been seen on three different occasions its name was to changed from comet Piggot to comet Piggot- Linear - Kowalski.

 It is also believed that the reason it was discovered by Piggot in 1783 was because the comet suffered sort of outburst and it brightened enormously, although brighter than it would normally be it still needed a telescope to see it.

If you wanted to find comet Piggot today you can find it in the constellation of Canes Venatici (the Hunting Dogs) a small constellation just below the handle of the famous group of stars known as the Plough. You would need a very big telescope to see it though. 

 

Quite a story for a comet that was discovered in Yorkshire



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Saturday, 16 November 2024

The 25 inch Cooke telescope at Cambridge

On January 24th and February 4th 1893 Mr Newall using the 25 inch Thomas Cooke & Sons telescope at the new observatory at Cambridge observed the 5thsatellite of Jupiter.

(I assume by the 5thsatellite he means Amalthea which was discovered by Barnard in 1892) 

Mr Newall remarked that it has been most justly described as a very difficult object to see.



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Friday, 15 November 2024

The 25 inch Newall telescope moves to Cambridge

 By November 1891 the 25 inch Newall Telescope and dome are all but completely mounted at their new site at Cambridge. Mr H F Newall son of Mr R Newall who purchased the 25 inch telescope from Thomas Cooke & Sons has built himself a house close by, whence he has been superintending the project.


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