person:mark mccaughrean

Communicating Astronomy with the Public: Rosetta special
▻http://blogs.esa.int/rosetta/2016/03/31/communicating-astronomy-with-the-public-rosetta-special

We’re delighted to announce a special issue of the "Communicating Astronomy with the Public" journal, which provides exclusive behind-the-scenes insights into the outreach surrounding the Rosetta Mission. Including articles written by ESA’s communication team behind the competitions, cartoons, and social media campaigns, and reviews from external journalists and documentary film-makers following this iconic mission. The table of contents is listed below. Read the full journal, free online here. Explained in 60 Seconds: Why Visit a Comet? (Emily Baldwin) The Strategy and Implementation of the Rosetta Communication Campaign (Markus Bauer, Mark McCaughrean, Jocelyne Landeau-Constantin) How a Cartoon Series Helped the Public Care about Rosetta and Philae (Claudia Mignone, Emily Baldwin, Karen S. (...)

#music of the Irregular Spheres
▻http://blogs.esa.int/rosetta/2014/12/19/music-of-the-irregular-spheres

This blog post is contributed by Mark McCaughrean, senior science advisor in the Directorate of Science and Robotic Exploration at ESA. The rather tortured title of this post is intended as a humorous reference to the decidedly non-spherical shape of #Comet_67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, the target of our #Rosetta mission. It also refers to the philosophical concept of ‘musica universalis’ or ‘music of the spheres’, usually attributed to Pythagoras, Ptolemy, and other ancient philosophers and scientists. They suggested that the proportions of the distances of the celestial bodies in the Solar System thought to be orbiting the Earth could be assigned tones, much as the pitch of a note coming from a plucked string is related to the length of that string. This theory was later developed further by (...)

#Comets #Comets_and_culture #Fun_stuff #culture_and_history #rosetta #soundcloud