Football in space

I had a plan for this post which ran something like this. 

Astronomers look at light from distant stars and galaxies. The challenge has always been to gather as much light as they can, hence bigger and bigger telescopes, and then to make as much use of it as possible. Now, whilst your eye can pick up about one photon in ten a decent photographic plate can manage two and a modern Charge Couple Device (CCD)  picks up eight. So the CCD is now the detector of choice.

I then intended to look at one of the not so obvious consequences of the use of CCDs, the growing popularity of football. Or rather, the growing business of football. With CCDs in cameras it's possible to do close up shots of distant action in relatively low levels of light. This means that the flicks, tricks and sly little kicks that were once only visible to spectators on the touchline can now be seen by all and mulled over exhaustively by the pundits.

Now I would have gone on to say that here was a surprising example of the influence of astronomy on popular culture but it turns out, with only a little research, that I would have been wrong. When the CCD was developed the initial idea was that it would be used, eventually, in some sort of "picture-phone" and not for astronomy.  So a story that I've told numerous students in the past, to try to demonstrate that basic science can bring about unexpected changes elsewhere, turns out to be false. Ah well...

But, the thing that brought this story to mind was the third anniversary of the death of an old friend John Wilson and my coincidental discovery of a picture of his dog, Stellar.

Stellar

John told me that I was the first to guess why he'd given her this name. When an astronomer looks at a photographic plate it's usually at the negative. So the stars appear as black patches on a white background. Hence the name.

Among John's many interests, he was a devout Manchester City fan and, as the owner of Oxford's premier cycle shop, was also a keen cyclist (why is it that cyclists are always "keen"?). Both of these sports have had huge injections of cash, at least at the top, through revenue from television and the main reason for this was the development of the CCD.

That he never got to see Manchester City win the English Premier League, or Bradley Wiggins win the Tour de France, are just two of the many opportunities that were lost when his life was cut short. 

In memoriam