If you escape the bright city lights of Aberdeen on a clear evening and look up you might get treated to an astronomical display of stars and meteor showers. If you are really lucky, then you might get a glimpse of the northern lights.
The relatively dry climate of North East Scotland gives us plenty of clear nights for prime stargazing and it's a great, free alternative to a night round the tellybox. Before the days of the T.V., when there wasn't much else to do once the sun went down, a local mathematician and astronomer, Sir David Gill, took the very first photograph of the moon in 1868.
If, like me, you are an interested (extremely) amateur astronomer without a telescope or space rocket and prefer the temperature to be above 20 degrees then you are in luck. The toasty warm
Aberdeen Maritime Museum has just opened a free exhibition all about Aberdeen's most famous astronomer and there are a series of
free evening talks about local stargazing, the history of time and the life of Sir David Gill. You can even pick up a stargazing live calendar!
Image taken by Nick Bramhall a Aberdeen based hiker, photographer, stargazer and blogger who also writes about
astronomy.
Gill is credited with taking that VERY FIRST photograph of the moon in 1868 but that was by no means his only contribution to our knowledge of space. Gill took accurate measurements of the stars and determined the distance of the sun from earth using the
parallax of the planet Mars (
see more on how that works here).
Gill was the son of a clockmaker and the free exhibition is well worth a visit to see some impressive telescopes, grandfather clocks and the
heliometer he used from the University of Aberdeen, Aberdeen Museums and Royal Astronomical society collections. The exhibition also details information about Gill's life in Aberdeen and the history of timekeeping.
It is also believed that Gill took the very first photograph of the Great Comet of 1882, although that wasn't taken in Ab
erdeen, it was taken when Gill was Her Majesty's Astronomer at the Royal Observatory in Cape Town, South Africa.
One big realisation for me was that Greenwich mean time was only officially rolled out in 1884. Before that people in Aberdeen could have been eating their breakfast while London was having lunch and no-one knew when you were supposed to catch a train. Although I do quite like the idea of just setting my own time. That could come in very useful.
Gill was taught by James Clerk Maxwell, a Scottish mathematical physicist in Aberdeen who's own contributions to physics ranked alongside Sir Issac Newton and Einstein. He also took the first permanent colour photograph in 1861 (which is of a tartan ribbon, see below).
Aberdeen researchers still contribute to our understanding of space today, just last month provided theories about whether
life can exist on other planets in our solar system.
If you are interested in more astronomy in Aberdeen then check out the
Aberdeen Astronomical Society events page who are very active in the local area and
tweet out information on what is visible in the local night sky.
I'm heading back out into the cold now with my woolly hat, jumper and a flask of tea now to stare at the stars!
