stargazing programme on bbc, is it in the rte mentality?

wbean wrote: It would be great to have some star parties at least but unlike our friends in the UK we've had some terrible weather since the BBC program started on Monday. After each episode I hopefully wander outside, only to be disappointed yet again. I know it's no use complaining about but perhaps that may also be a reason why RTE might be reluctant to produce a show like Star Gazing Live.

Speaking in favor of a similar Irish program; there really is a great enthusiasm for astronomy in Ireland and we have loads of great home grown speakers and professors in the field who I'm sure would be more than happy to get involved.

I'd definitely be 100% behind it.

One of Daves comments was my first thought on reading this thread. Your comments mirrored my second thought on the subject. As bad as they think they have it in England(as opposed to the whole UK) they are much more likely to be on the right side of a weather system and be under a more settled continental influence. While I am not sure if RTE ever put that much thought into an idea like Stargazing Live but we/they would have to be prepared to have enough 'indoor' content to fill the entire programme in the likely event of 100% cloud on the night or conversely be prepared to drop a lot of the indoor content should the skies be clear and the outdoor content is doable.

To put things into perspective. I think it was 2 years ago that Deirdre and others decided to have a sister monthly outreach event to the Sandymount one here in my town of Bray. ie. Bray on the Friday, Sandymount on the Saturday. In 2 years there has been no clear Friday afaik and about 3 or 4 clear Saturdays. Irish astronomers are masochists by nature Its amazing that in the 2 years were my scope has been mothballed due to work, family and health commitments I still haven't missed a single Bray Seafront outreach event yet!!

This is the year I get back in the game though. I'm going to be an outreach machine. I'll be Deirdres lapdog!!

Calibos wrote:

wbean wrote: Irish astronomers are masochists by nature

Let's have more optimism, hurray!

wben wrote

It would be great to have some star parties at least

There are 3 current IFAS star parties - Galway this weekend, COSMOS in April and Burren in September

OK I found the link to enable BBC i Player down here ,its called Expat Shield , not sure if it is legal ??? perhaps some of you web heads could inform me on that , thanks.

It lets you access BBC i Player to view missed programmes. So I had a look at BBC Newsline Northern Ireland
and there was Terry from the IAA and Derek Heatly ( the Ulster astronaut )talking about astronomy ( after the sports toward the end of the news) for BBC Stargazing Live.
So that is why they were not on the main show because their section was regional, was wondering , had to find out.

Deirdre Kelleghan
@skysketcher

Hi Deirdre,
It's what I've been using to watch the Stargazing live since monday.

Basically it sends out a UK IP address through the browser in place of you're on, in order to fool the iPlayer code into thinking you're in the UK.

As far as I can tell there are no legal implications for us over here but I'm no expert. Works great though. Funny that we're talking about this now, amidst all the SOPA and PIPA excitement.

Using expat shield, or any other proxy is not illegal. You might be breaking the BBC's T&C's if they require you to be in the UK but that's all.