Oh, dear God. I watched "The West Wing" tonight hoping to assuage my fears that it has jumped the shark, and instead I find that they decided to write a science storyline without any science consultants.
>>Beware! Nerd Spoilers!<<
I will be nitpicking, but with good measure. First, kudos to Meade for their product placement. We get to see Josh and his hot NASA-babe looking through what looks like a 12" LX200, then later, she gets him an 125mm ETX in exchange for the $40 billion he's going to try and get her. Some trade!
OK, astronomy people, pay attention:
1. When looking at Jupiter through a telescope, the cloud belts and zones do not move perpendicular to the ecliptic. She shows him J and the 4 moons with the clouds and moons moving perpendicular to each other. Booo.
2. The Orion nebula looks kind of like that, but not so much like it was a sketch.
3. Mars is WAY too big in that scope. Mars is a tiny planet (1/10 earth diameter) and presents a very small aspect; certainly not that big. And the level of detail seen in that scope is absurd, even with great seeing. Plus, at the time they would have been out, Mars has already set--it sets early in the evening and Jupiter doesn't rise until later.
4. Wherever they were, the conditions were lousy. It was bright enough to read out there--it looked brighter than a full moon.
Of course, it's easy to forget bad science when you're being courted by a mega-babe with a Ph. D toting a big telescope.
By the way, that guy's name is Bethe (bay-teh), not Beth. Hans Bethe. Look him up.
I'm also not convinced the show hasn't jumped the shark. Sure, the writing is dull, the issues are trite, and the writers seem to have gone out of their way to minimize the presence of interesting characters, but there is still hope. Not like ER, which has adopted for its major plot engine "Poop on a character for a season". Blah. Now I get more sleep.
posted by Eric at 10:39 PM
