Moonbounce

A guest appearance today from the Books crowd at The Times, who have made a tentative but exciting foray into the world of technology.

To celebrate the 50th anniversary of the first time the radio telescope at Jodrell Bank moved -- it rotates in azimuth and tilts in elevation, swinging on gun turrets rescued from battleships -- we have helped stage the First Move literary and scientific festival this weekend. Here, in the shadow of the telescope, in the middle of the Cheshire plain, we have enjoyed literary and scientific speakers, and watched the telescope 'dance', showing off its various moves. We can report it is in excellent nick for a 50-year-old dancer. 

The highlight, though, came earlier this afternoon when a hare-brained scheme to bounce poems off the moon came to fruition. When we heard this could be done, it appealed to our romantic sensibilities no end, and we begged the astronomers here, notably Tim O'Brien and Ian Morison to help us make it happen.

We chose a poem by one of our readers, Joanna Clark (pictured with the telescope peeking out behind her) and also some poems by local children, written in workshops here at the Jodrell Bank visitor centre.

Having done this, we allowed our new scientific friends to explain to us that we would use Skype to send the sound of each poet reading their work to a man in Buckinghamshire with radio transmitters in his garden. He would amplify the sound and send it to the moon as radio waves. The waves would bounce off the moon, be picked up by a special receiver attached to the famous dish at Jodrell Bank. They would then convert the radio waves to sound, and play it back to us. This process would take about 2.5 seconds.

The effect was that, if the poet paused each time she read a line, we would be able to hear it, faintly, as it echoed back to us from the moon.

After much hard work and testing, everyone was delighted that we did manage to make it happen. From our lovely competition winner, to the little girl who speculated that the moon might be made from jelly, poems of all shapes and sizes were sent to the moon and bounced back down to us.

It was great fun, and we send out a huge vote of thanks to everyone at Jodrell Bank and to the moon herself. Books has decided that technology is awesome, so don't be surprised if we come back for more sometime, doing our bit to erode the barriers between the Two Cultures.

Click here to read the winning poem

Comments

[Jane Henry]

I couldn't be there today to listen to my sister (Joanna Clark) reading her poem, but am delighted that it all went to plan. What a brilliant and mad idea. Only in England, methinks...

[Jeff]

There's nothing really special about this event. Radio amateurs (hams) have doing doing moonbounce for years.

73 de W1ALA
Jeff

[Justin]

73 de W1ALA
Jeff

Ooh you're SO clever ... is that what you wanted to hear?