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Dusk is beginning to fall and Wilf and his wife are preparing to go to bed. Their routine has changed in the past three-and-a-half months, to fall into line with the natural diurnal cycle, as has that of most of their neighbours. They lie talking as the sky, the world, darkens. Then just as suddenly as the lights had gone, the pink, then yellow glow of the sodium street lights come on.
“It’s back!” Wilf declares what’s obvious. “The street lights are on again.”
They both jump out of bed and look outside. So do their neighbours, and a great cheer goes up.
Clothes thrown aside are quickly put on for decency’s sake, and dozens of people pour out into the streets.
“Telly’s on too,” Wilf’s wife calls five minutes later. “They are saying that the power cuts all over the world have stopped, and they will be broadcasting an emergency service, with news and films until they’ve sorted themselves out.”
“The wireless is saying the same,” says a neighbour. “Well, news and music.”
“I just telephoned my sister in Manchester,” says another, “and they’ve got the power back on.”
Wilf’s wife continues the commentary: “They said that if all goes well, all the power stations will be generating by tomorrow evening except the atomic ones that take longer to start. They’re giving priority to hospitals and the like, so we might be getting the odd power cut in the mean time. If so, we’re not to worry.”
Harry telephones Gert; it is well after sunset. “It’s me, Harry! I presume you’ve found that the power supply is back on.”
“Well, Harry, it’s so good to hear that, isn’t it. Actually I’d already gone to sleep when your telephone call woke me! But it’s marvellous, isn’t it? I wonder what it was all about, what caused it.”
“I don’t know, but I think it has something to do with that star. I looked out a moment ago, and it’s back! It’s rather faint, but it’s definitely there. Somewhere near magnitude 6, I would guess.”
“Well I never! It was about magnitude 4 when we last saw it.”
“Yes, but that was three months ago, before it disappeared. A lot can happen in that time.”
“Don’t we know it!” she laughs. “But I think explanations will have to wait until tomorrow.”
“The news programmes will no doubt only have endless speculations with so-called experts who couldn’t tell a dwarf star from a wart on their elbow!”
“Well, Harry, what a thought! But to be honest, I don’t think I would have anything useful to say about that star, not that anyone would ask me, I’m sure! So, I think I’ll retire to bed and try to get some sleep, if I can, that is. This must be a night to remember.”
“Indeed, Gert. But you might have sparked an idea in my mind. I’ll talk to you about it tomorrow. Good night.”
“Good night, Harry. Sleep well if you can! All this excitement...”
Ivan Bassinger goes into his room in the University on 9th October, a Saturday and the morning after the power returns. Quite a few of the staff are around and inevitably the topic everyone is talking about is the Black-Out. Several who live further away phone to say they’ll be there as soon as possible. Slowly small groups of lecturers, professors and other staff form, to try to see what they can recover of the new academic year.
So far as the Astrophysics Department is concerned, Ivan is alone. His small team phone in, one by one, to let him know what their situation is, and so do the students. The first of the new post-graduates is Louisa Taylor, who says she’ll be able to get there tomorrow; then Martin Smith who hopes to be in by mid-afternoon today. His other two researchers, Anna Hobson and Clive Morgan expect to be in on Monday morning. The other three who were offered places have, it seems, decided to go to other Universities.
Ivan does the round of telephoning all the undergraduates who haven’t yet called in and tells them to report to him on the Wednesday of next week; that should give him and his staff time to sort out the remains of last year’s course and plan what they can for the next one. His last list is the third-year undergraduates from last year, who had just finished their final examinations when the world blacked out. He apologises profusely for the delay in getting their results to them, but promises a telephone call on Monday, probably late in the day, followed by a formal letter. He knows that in some cases his staff have not yet been able to properly award grades to them, so that will be a top priority as soon as they all come in.
The next day, Sunday, Harry walks down to Gert’s cottage about a quarter of a mile along the lane, a journey he has made several times in the past three months. He rings the door-bell and is ushered into the parlour.
“Have you had your breakfast?” she asks him.
“Yes, thank you, I had some cereal. But a cup of your lovely coffee would be most welcome.”
“I’m afraid it’s all run out. I can’t get to the shops so easily now that there are no buses. But I have got some instant coffee, if you wouldn’t object too strongly to that.”
“Any kind would be very gratefully received.”
When she returns from the kitchen with two hot steaming mugs, Gert asks: “You said last night that you had a spark of an idea about something. Has that spark grown any brighter?”
“Yes it has. I have a former school-friend who works in the Astrophysics Department at the University at Tiverton. He’s not very senior, but... Anyway, I telephoned him before I came down here and said that we — I explained who you were — had some interesting pictures of the star. He said he’d like to see them. I didn’t go into specifics, but said that I’d discuss it with you and we might come over to see him, perhaps this week.”
“Yes, how exciting. But neither of us has a car, so...”
“I even thought of that,” Harry interrupts her, “and I telephoned the bus station. It was very difficult getting through as I imagine they were inundated with calls. Eventually I did and the manager told me there’s to be an hourly bus on route 37; it leaves at five past each hour from eight in the morning, plus one very early journey. Shall we go tomorrow? Catch the five past nine?”
“Oh, yes!”
“If you pick out those paintings and sketches we found most revealing, and I’ll do the same with my photos, we’ll take them with us and see what he makes of them. It might be a wild-goose chase, but on the other hand... well, who knows?”
“Splendid! I’ll be at your house at half-past eight and we should be well in time for the five past nine bus.”
“Agreed!”
Just after 2:30, Martin Smith knocks at Ivan’s door and presents himself as the University’s first research student in Astrophysics. It is the first time Ivan has met Martin, who has just been told by St Andrew’s University in Scotland that he has been awarded a first class honours degree in French.
“I’m very pleased to meet you, Martin, and many congratulations on your degree in French.”
“Thank you, sir. I realise that my language qualification won’t exactly be the appropriate prerequisite for an advanced scientific subject, but I have been keen on astronomy since I was a kid. I have been reading as many books as our local library could lay its hands on during the Black-Out. So I hope I’ve got some of the background material to help me here.”
“Good. You’re right; there’s a big gap between the two disciplines. However, if your brain is good enough to get you a First at St Andrews, well you should be able to cope in almost any subject, given an interest on your part and a bit of gap-filling on ours. And, by the way, I like to run an informal shop here, so no more ‘sirs’; I’m ‘Ivan’. OK?”
“Sure, Ivan,” Martin feels a little awkward using his superior’s first name.
“Have you got your accommodation sorted out?”
“Yes, I’ve got some digs within walking distance, though I have got to find a permanent place to keep my car; it’s not that it’s worth much, but I’ve grown attached to it in the last two years, and I’d like to think it was in a happy place!”
“You’ll have to learn soon that there’s no place for sentimentality in pure science...”
“Sorry, that was meant to be a joke! I just need somewhere to keep the old banger!”
“A misunderstanding. Nevertheless, I mean what I say about keeping emotions out of your work. Hunches are fine; idle thoughts are OK too, and thinking the unthinkable can help. Where would we be without the likes of Newton and Einstein thinking along the lines they did?
“Look, I’ve prepared a list of prerequisite reading — books, papers, web-sites, and so on. I’ll show you your office in a moment, and the library. As you may well imagine, I’ve quite a lot of catching-up to do myself, so I’ll be leaving you to do some self-study initially. Then when everyone’s here, we’ll have a session on the activities to be covered in this first academic year. I’ve got some ideas, as have some of the other lecturers, but I’d like your input as well.
“Another student, Louisa Taylor is arriving tomorrow. The other students are Anna Hobson and Clive Morgan, and they’ll be here on Monday, so I hope we’ll all be able to start the ball rolling then. Barring Black-Outs! OK. ‘Squad: dismiss!’ as my old Flying Officer used to say.”
They just manage to get onto the bus, though there are so many people wanting to travel, who haven’t been able to do so for many weeks. They sit in the same row, on opposite sides of the gangway, and as there are dozens of people standing, they have little opportunity to talk. Also, Gert is laden with her bulky package of paintings, making her journey even more uncomfortable.
There is a big disappointment for all those waiting at bus stops en route — “sorry, bus full!” but the whole situation is most unusual. The driver uses his mobile phone to call the depôt, and they manage to find more buses to satisfy the demand; some of them are not only delicensed, but also condemned, but the company decides to take a chance, for the good of their public image. Few passengers have ever had the experience of travelling on a pre-war Guy Arab bus, even if it isn’t the most roomy or comfortable transport they have been on! They are just grateful for something, and fingers-crossed that it doesn’t break down. Even an open-topped single-decker with wooden bench seats would be better than nothing for many.
Gert and Harry leave the bus at the central bus station in Tiverton, noting the times of return journeys and resolving not to be at all late in view of the enormous volume of people travelling. They are pleased to breathe the relatively cool fresh air outside, even though it has been a very warm day. They are sweaty and uncomfortable as they walk the short distance up the hill to the University’s Physical Sciences building which houses the Department of Astrophysics.
Gert is most impressed by the architecture of the building and determines that one day she will come alone with her easel and paints to capture the essence of the building.
Harry asks the Porter if he could see Dr Bassinger; they have an appointment with him. A few minutes after the Porter has called Bassinger’s number, a man in his late middle age appears and cries “Harry! Good to see you after all this time! How are you, old boy? And who’s your lady friend?”
“I’m fine, thank you. Ivan, I’d like you to meet Miss Gentry, a neighbour of mine.”
“Hello Dr Bassinger, please call me Gert.”
“Pleased to meet you, Gert. As you’ve just heard, I’m Ivan.”
They follow him along ancient corridors and up rather worn and dangerous stairs quite some distance to his office. Heaven only knows what this building was before the government endowed it as a University a few years ago.
Ivan finds a second guest chair from an adjacent room and beckons them to sit down. “So you’ve been looking at that strange new star. Have you had a chance to look at it since the power came back on?”
“Er... no, not really” Harry responds. “Why? Has it changed? I noticed only that it has dropped from magnitude 4 to about 6, that’s all.”
“And I haven’t even seen it at all since then, I’m afraid,” Gert adds. “What did you mean when you said it was a strange new star?”
“Well, let’s go back to 17th June last year, when it was first observed. The web was full of tweets about it from all over the northern hemisphere. The earliest observation was from Canada where an amateur reported seeing it at 18:36.”
“I am so sorry,” Gert interjects. “What web are you talking about? And ‘tweets’ did you say?”
“Gert prefers her sketchbook and paints to anything electronic; no television and a radio that only blasts pop music at her from the transmitter up the hill. So nothing too technical, please Ivan.”
“I’m so sorry to be a dinosaur! I shall probably be extinct soon!”
“No problem. It’s actually rather refreshing to meet somebody who doesn’t google everything — and please ignore that word! I can explain it if I need to. The ‘web’ is a huge network — like a spider’s web — which has computers at each point where the strands of silk meet. There are millions of computers all over the world that are connected like this by cables, radio and links through artificial satellites. And every one has the ability to send information — words, pictures, even music and movies — to any other computer that is part of the web. A ‘tweet’ is a short message, words only, that refer to a specific area of interest so that all’s not complete chaos. Mind you, some might dispute that!”
“So you are telling me that someone in Canada was the first to see the new star, and that he was able to tell you about it with his computer and also anyone else who was interested?” Gert asks.
“Exactly! You’ve got it!”
“How long does it take for other people like yourself to receive this information?”
“A couple of seconds, maybe.”
Harry thinks that Gert is about to faint, but she is just taking in Ivan’s astonishing statement.
“You mean that someone in Canada can type into his computer that he has just seen a new star in Ursa Major, and two seconds later you can read his message.”
“Essentially, yes. And I can type a message into my computer asking him for its exact position, and he will see my question another two seconds after I send it. Then maybe he’ll have to make some detailed observations on his telescope, and he’ll let me know as soon as he has the details. And in the mean time, there are dozens of other messages appearing on computers, from people who have also seen it, and perhaps have some good information. All of those who are interested can contribute.”
“This is unbelievable! I used to think that I could write a letter to my sister in Scotland and get a reply from her two days later, if I was lucky. But please continue with your fascinating account, and do you mind if I ask silly questions?”
“No question is silly. Sometimes it shows lack of familiarity with a subject, in which case, of course you may interrupt. Quite often a ‘silly’ question leads to a breakthrough in our own understanding.”
“Thank you. I’m afraid I really am a dull-head regarding technology. Please go on.”
Ivan resumes his story that seems to have begun on 17th June 2009.
“When something new is discovered in the sky, it is standard procedure to look back through the archives of photographs and other reports to see if the object has been seen before. Very often we find that, with a star that has suddenly become visible to the naked eye, a very faint object has appeared on photographs taken many years before in exactly the same position. In this case, many of us looked back but could find absolutely nothing, even from the previous day. That is most unusual.
“Have you heard of the Hubble Telescope, Gert?”
“I’ve heard of it, but I don’t really know what it is.”
“It’s a huge telescope that is in orbit around the Earth, a bit like the moon is. It is man-made and contains very powerful telescopes as well as many other scientific gadgets. It can be moved to point to any direction in space and take photographs and make other measurements. Then it transmits them back to the Earth by radio and we pick up the signals and turn them back into photographs or whatever.”
“What will they think of next?”
“The Hubble Telescope had taken some photographs of that region of the sky a few nights previously, and we searched in vain for any sign of the new star. These were very detailed long-exposure photographs, believe me, that went as far as magnitude 17, and that is jolly faint! Think of a night-light on the moon and you’ve got some notion of how much detail Hubble can pick up.”
“May I use the word ‘wow’, which I believe is in vogue today?”
“A million ‘wows’,” Harry laughs.
Ivan goes on: “There were a few of us who were greatly puzzled by this odd star that had suddenly come from nowhere, though the rest went on to other things that they thought were more interesting. I continued examining what I could on my own telescope, because time on Hubble and similar telescopes is very valuable...”
“What does that mean?” Gert asks.
“Hubble is a very powerful and expensive telescope. If I want to use it to examine something, for example our new star, I have to request permission to use it, get it signed off, the agency that operates it must be paid for its use, and so on... lots of bureaucracy, believe me! If I get allocated time to use the telescope, my department is charged for the use of the telescope, and that doesn’t come cheap, believe me! I have to justify what I’m doing to my head of department, our Accounts department, and so on, and so on.”
“Isn’t everything so complicated and bureaucratic these days!” exclaims Gert.
“Yes, but I did get a very short slot in which to use a large telescope in the mountains of Chile, back in mid-June, the 15th, I think. Just five minutes! And all I found was a typical brown dwarf star — nothing special about it. One that had apparently risen to magnitude 4 a year ago and was now decaying slowly. Then a few days later came the Black-Out! All our computers were useless, Hubble couldn’t be contacted, nothing. Talk about frustration! And then this week when the power was restored, all our computers gradually came up, and it turned out that the whole world had simply gone dark at exactly the same time. Yes, exactly the same time, to the second!”
Harry intervenes: “I estimate the star’s magnitude at about 6 now.”
Ivan adds: “5.8 according to my measurements, so you’re pretty close. Well done! No Hubble this time; there are dozens, hundreds, maybe thousands of people waiting their turn after missing out for the past four months. I found my trusty old four-inch refractor from way-back-when. Do you remember when we were at school, Harry, you used to come round to my parents’ house many evenings and we’d spend ages looking at the sky through it?”
“Oh, yes. Those were the days. And you’ve still got it?”
“Yes, and I still get it out occasionally, but I haven’t been able to use it much recently during the Black-Out, as the motorised drive wouldn’t work, so I couldn’t take the long exposure photos I wanted to. My first one was last night and that’s how I got the figure of 5.8.”
Ivan stops talking and waits for Harry or perhaps Gert to say something, such as why they have come to see him.
From the bottom of the previous column
It is Gert who interrupts the silence. “I am so amazed by all these things you are talking about: computers, webs, tweets, huge telescopes in outer space taking these photographs. You see, I don’t really belong in this world at all; it’s all too mystical, almost frightening for me. I haven’t got a television set or even a radio that works, and I don’t bother with newspapers. I don’t think I’ve read one since I went to London many years ago and saw a copy of their evening newspaper, The Star. Ha! I’ve just seen the irony of that, The Star, and here we are talking about one!”
She continues: “My house and the old garden shed are full of my paintings and sketches. That’s my life, no Hubbles. I’m a total dinosaur. I should have been declared extinct years ago!” she repeats unashamedly.
Harry interrupts her: “That’s not true, and you know it. Your life is as relevant to you as Ivan’s is to him. And what’s more, your talent might just help us solve this current puzzle of the new star, as you well know!”
“Really?” Ivan is quite baffled and taken aback by this. How could this old woman possibly help, with her total lack of the modern world? “How can you help?” He almost stresses the word ‘you’ but corrects himself as that would have been rude.
“Well, I often go down with my paints to the beach or to the cliffs where we live. I cannot resist some of the wonderful cloud formations we get, and every now and then I paint the stars and planets and the moon, especially when it’s dark enough, though even those horrid sodium street-lights can add their contribution. I was making some sketches and some quick outlines of the sky when that star disappeared; you see, I notice those things, little subtle changes. The Black-Out at the same time almost escaped me, as I was so surprised at the star’s disappearance!”
“We really owe a lot to people like Gert,” Harry adds. “But for her, how many others saw the star vanish? Not many, I’d wager. They were all too busy worrying about power cuts and missing their favourite television programmes.”
“Well, yes,” Ivan concedes. “But I saw that it had gone within a few hours. What was it about the star that captured your attention, Gert?”
“It was Harry who drew my attention to it. You see, he had been down on the beach with his camera — do you know what a fine photographer he is?” Ivan shakes his head. “He left a little before me, as he was using monochrome film and the colours in the sky weren’t of such interest to him as they were to me, were they, Harry?”
Harry continues the story. “That’s right, Gert. On a whim I took a couple of photos of the new star, or rather where it should have been. I thought I saw something odd, but what wasn’t odd that night? I developed the film as best as I could without my usual equipment available, and then I remembered that Gert here had been on the beach that evening and I wanted to compare notes with her. We met the next day and found something, we think, and we’d like your opinion on it.”
Ivan is becoming more interested by the minute. “What did you find, then? It must have been something important for you to have travelled all the way here on a whim, not that I didn’t want to see you, Harry, and your lady friend.”
Gert blushes at what Ivan might be suggesting, though neither man notices her embarrassment. Nor was any innuendo meant.
“How long would it take you to tell us anything that’s interesting, out of the normal run of things, for this star?” Harry asks Ivan.
“Well not too long I hope. Usually if we spot anything new it’s probably a comet, an asteroid or something like that. But this star was suddenly there, so bright, something so unusual that nobody could account for it, especially when we went back to those old Hubble photographs. As you know it first appeared on 17th June last year, essentially from nowhere, with magnitude 4; we checked all available photographs of that part of the sky right down to mag. — sorry — magnitude 17. Then back in June this year, I observed it using the VLT — that’s the Very Large Telescope in Chile — and it was a typical magnitude 4.6 brown dwarf, nothing appeared odd about it. It was gradually fading, which is not abnormal, with small fluctuations that are typical of that sort of star. It’s possible that it was being obscured from us by a dust cloud, totally or partially. Shortly afterwards — on 21st June, as you know — the Black-Out started, and according to the most reliable sources, the star had gone within 20 minutes of that happening; it might have been before that, indeed the last report of a sighting before the Black-Out was five minutes earlier. It would be a little unprofessional as a scientist to speculate that the two events — the star vanishing and the Black-Out — were related, but one can’t help wondering...”
“No, indeed,” Gert adds her non-professional agreement. “One does wonder...”
“Now the star’s back, and so is the electricity,” Ivan continues. “Another coincidence? And it has fallen to magnitude 5.8, which is a bit abnormal for a brown dwarf after that time gap, but if there’s a lot of dust around, that could account for the drop. There is one other thing about it which I’ll talk about in a minute, but first I’d like to know it was that prompted you both to come to see me?”
“I got home about the same time as the power went off on 21st June,” says Harry, “and I went outside to see whatever I could; why was there this strange Black-Out, which affected the radio, TV, phones, everything? There were the usual stars and so on, nothing odd, until I saw that the new star had gone. I quickly took my camera from its case and photographed that part of the sky. I noted the time of each photo, and I can better your 20 minutes; my first photograph was at 23:47 on 21st June, that’s eleven minutes after the time they’re reporting that the Black-Out started. And as I took the first photograph, I thought I saw a green flash through my viewfinder.”
“Interesting,” Ivan observes, “but not really conclusive. You said you were using black-and-white film?”
“Yes. Down on the beach the cloud formations were interesting, and I prefer that sort of film for them. I think it makes them more... what’s the word?... atmospheric, or mysterious.”
“Do you mind if I add this to the web-site about the star?”
“You mean, tell people on the computer? I’ve no objection at all, but can you hear Gert’s part of the story first?”
“Of course, I’m so sorry. I was so fascinated by Harry’s account that I’m afraid your part escaped me. Please tell me.”
“I was painting down on the beach until quite late. Like Harry, I found the clouds so beautiful, but I am more of an impressionist and it’s the subtle colours that mean so much to me. I was still there after dark — the skies interest me too, and even the stars have their colours, the wonderful redness of Betelgeuse and Antares, and..., well I could go on for ever with all the other colours of the rainbow. And when I’m painting clouds just before the light totally goes, I can cover a canvas with dozens of shades of grey; it’s rarely pure grey, but has patches of red, brown, yellow, blue, everything. Ask Harry, he has seen many of them.”
“And beautiful they are!”
“The next day Harry came to see if I was all right after the Black-Out, which was very kind of him. He also asked me if I had painted any pictures of the sky the previous night, which of course I had. He said he had seen something odd just when the power cut happened, and he wondered if I had seen it. He came back some days later with his printed photographs from that night, and we compared them with my paintings.”
“It was jolly difficult developing and printing the photos because none of my apparatus was working. I made lots of calculations before I developed the film, and then kept my fingers crossed. I tried umpteen exposures for the prints, and eventually some of them came out reasonably well, though they are all the same size as the negatives.”
“Harry and I looked through my paintings and his photographs, using a magnifying glass and an old microscope which used to belong to my dear father. We saw a part of a circle on one photograph, just where the star was, and one of my paintings showed a green splurge in that position, which Harry insists was exactly the same colour as he saw through his viewfinder.”
“Yes, exactly the same, I’d swear it!”
“You said it was a ‘splurge’ of green. Can you be more specific?”
“It was roundish, but not a complete circle,” Gert adds.
“I saw an arc of green through the viewfinder, but it didn’t last for more than just a few seconds.”
“Have you brought your photos and paintings?” Ivan has noticed Gert’s large package.
“Yes,” Harry and Gert say in unison. They unpack their envelopes and cases and show them to Ivan. He examines them closely, very closely with a powerful eyepiece.
“This one definitely shows an arc of a curve,” he says to Harry. “Are you sure that it isn’t an artefact of your camera or the developing process?”
“Absolutely sure! Well, not absolutely because I was relying on candles to give me the light for developing and printing, but I’m pretty certain.”
Ivan turns to Gert. “This patch of green is definitely what you saw in the sky? You haven’t changed it to make it look more attractive in the painting?”
“Oh, no. Sometimes I may alter the position of something to make it look better in my mind, but I remain faithful to the colours. That colour is what I saw at the position of our star. To me, it’s the colour of something that is what is worth painting, and represents its true essence; I don’t worry so much about true shapes or even relationships between things half as much as I do colour.”
“I’m sorry if I sound a little sceptical, but if I publish this on the web, people are going to question me in this way. So I want to be absolutely certain. You see?”
“Yes,” Harry and Gert say again in unison, though Gert isn’t sure what she is agreeing to.
“I’m going to compose a report for the web-site that deals with the star, and another, rather briefer for the Black-Out site.”
“Yes, but you said that you had something to tell us,” Gert adds with anticipation.
“I did indeed. First I’ll keep my little secret from you a bit longer!” he teases. “May I use your names in my reports? I could refer to you simply as ‘acquaintances’.”
“Perhaps it might be better if we retain our anonymity at present, just in case we make complete asses of ourselves,” Gert replies and Harry agrees.
Ivan sits at the computer desk and starts typing. While doing so he says that he will show them what he is going to tell the world before he sends his reports to everyone, so that they could be sure they aren’t being misrepresented, or that nothing of consequence has been omitted.
After several minutes typing he turns the screen so that Gert and Harry can read what he’s entered.
Subject: 2009UMa7
From: Ivan Bassinger
I’ve just had a visit from two amateur astronomers who have some interesting information about star 2009UMa7. The man is a photographer in black-and-white; his lady friend is an artist who uses various materials, but in this case acrylic paint on hardboard. They both saw 2009UMa7 on the night it disapeared.
The man saw that the star was going and quickly set up his camera to photograph the sky in that area. Through his viewfinder he says he saw the star and then photographed a green arc of a circle where the star had been. (Of course it came out in black and white.)
The lady paints in an impressionistic way and she put a patch of green where the star had been. She says that she is more interested in colour than shapes and positions, but the green patch was in the right place, just where the star had been.
They both agree on the colour, exactly, while it lasted. — IB
“I like being described as an amateur astronomer; it makes me sound important. What’s ‘2009UMa7’?”Gert asks.
“That’s a name we gave to it when it first appeared so that everyone could refer to the same thing. There are new objects appearing all the time, so we need a way of distinguishing between them. The name, which is given to a nova, has been retained for the moment, even though we’re absolutely sure its not a nova.”
“I see. And you’ve only put one ‘P’ in ‘disappeared’ — there.”
“Oh, sorry. I’ll fix that. Is it OK otherwise?”
“OK by me,” Harry affirms.
“And me, too.”
Ivan adjusts the typo and clicks on send. “There you are; that’s the report for the people who are especially interested in this star.”
“My guess is that we’ll get some questions in within five minutes.” His estimate is too long; three minutes later the question comes in from France:
Subject: 2009UMa7
From: Jean le Camp
Great news Ivan. Have you got an exact (or estimate) time? — JlC
Then another a moment later:
Subject: 2009UMa7
From: Fred Schuster
Just saw your report and JlC’s Q. Fantastic info, Ivan! Any angular data for the green arc? How big? — FRS
“Fred is the guy in Canada who first saw it on 17th June last year at 18:36,” Ivan explains.
“What is a ‘Q’?” Gert asks innocently.
“A question,” Ivan explains.
“Oh how obvious! Silly me.”
Subject: 2009UMa7
From: Jean le Camp
How long it was vivible? — JlC
“He means ‘how long was it visible’. But remember he is French, and we computer nerds use a lot of strange jargon! Can you answer any of them right now?” He starts a new message:
Subject: 2009UMa7
From: Ivan Bassinger
Hi Jean and Fred. Great to get something more that’s good to work with, eh? The guy took his photos at 23:47 on 21st June. (He keeps meticulous notes of his photos.) He describes it as a ‘flash’ of green in his viewfinder. The star wasn’t there when he took the next picture;
“Right, Harry? What gap was there between the photos?”
“Less than a minute.” Privately Harry doesn’t like being called a ‘guy’; it sounds to him like an American hoodlum.
“And where was the arc? Top, bottom, left, right of the picture? You’ve examined it closer than I have.”
“My camera doesn’t invert pictures like astronomical telescopes, so I’d say it was between east and south-south-east, with a slightly brighter piece near the middle of the arc. It was a little like the Bailey’s Beads you get at a total eclipse of the Sun.”
Ivan adds to his computer note and sends it:
he says it was less than a minute before he took the next photo, and the star had gone, with just the arc of green in the first picture. The arc was between east and south-south-east, with a slightly brighter piece near the middle of the arc, like Bailey’s Beads in a solar eclipse. — IB
“Harry, can you let me have the negative of this photo, and the next one? I promise I won’t damage them in any way, and I won’t publish them without your express permission. Gert, I’ve left you out of things for a bit. Can you let me have your painting with the green flash. I’d like to make some colour measurements of your patch. Same conditions apply, of course.”
Both agree eagerly.
“I’ll just let the world know that I’ve got the originals and plan to have them analysed as quickly as I can. No doubt some people will want to see them for themselves, but my promise holds. I’ll tell them what I’ve discovered, but no more at this stage, until I’ve consulted you both again. And you’re anonymous, too.” He adds another message to the computer.
Subject: 2009UMa7
From: Ivan Bassinger
I’ve got the original photos and painting, with a promise to my two acquaintances of non-publication, nor revelation of their names. I’m going to do some work on them asap, so I’ll keep you briefed.
Expect to hear from me in a few days. Meanwhile any further questions or ideas welcome. Going offline now. — IB
“What’s ‘asap’,” Gert, always inquisitive, asks.
“‘As soon as possible’; it’s another bit of computer jargon, I think; it might be in general use now. I believe it’s even in the English dictionary! But now it’s almost lunch-time and I know a cosy little restaurant not too far away where we can celebrate this breakthrough. And the meal’s on me! Are you both game?”
“Excellent,” Harry agrees.
“It sounds lovely.”
After lunch, Ivan sees Harry and Gert off on their bus back to Bossington, and then returns to his office in the University.
It isn’t long before the porter calls him and says that a young lady by the name of Louisa Taylor has arrived. Ivan greets her, congratulates her on her degree in Human Biology, and has a similar conversation as he had yesterday with Martin. Louisa has no accommodation yet, so he advises her to sort that out first, and directs her to the University Accommodation Bureau.