We’re on the Grid!
- By Sara Mitchell
- March 31, 2011
- 4 Comments
Last week, we got a tip from a long-time Twitter follower (hi, Pete!) that Blueshift showed up in the April 2011 issue of Astronomy magazine. I just got my hands on a copy, and there we are, in the issue’s “Cosmic Grid” section on the last page. Why are we there? For our visit to the set of The Big Bang Theory, of course! According to the grid, which has highly scientific axes for HOT/NOT and WEIRD/PREDICTABLE, our visit falls somewhere in the middle, but we’re pleased to be closer to HOT than NOT! It’s debatable whether a visit that occurred last September is really hot news anymore… but if you consider it on an astronomical timescale, it’s still very recent!
The blurb features a tiny version of the photo that went out with the NASA release about our visit (written by Maggie), and got picked up by a bunch of news outlets thereafter. It’s a bit surreal to see my face (approximately the size of a peppercorn) in a magazine! Here’s the photo they used:
We haven’t talked about The Big Bang Theory in a while, but the NASA goodies that we provided to the production staff are still popping up in various episodes. There have been a few episodes with scenes in Raj’s apartment this season… and if you look closely, you’ll see the James Webb Space Telescope model, some posters, a bunch of magnets, and other things from NASA! We just sent them a new batch of stuff, and we’ve been told a large Webb poster will be to the left of Raj’s door in an upcoming episode. Maggie and I always have our fingers on the pause button when we watch, so we can catch any hidden goodies in a scene. The excitement of it still hasn’t worn off for us!
That’s so cool. My friend Simon is on that show. I don’t know if you got a chance to talk to him at all about astronomy, but hes a pretty funny guy. There was one episode of a show he used to do called “Derek and Simon” (check it out) where Simon steps on a bee and a lit cigarette because mercury was in retrograde. Haha. Thanks for the cool posts
@ Dave: We only interviewed Bill Prady, one of the producers. But it’s good to know that Simon has a history with astronomy… or at least astrology, which is a start!
@ Faith: Who doesn’t love NASA goodies? ;)
Ah that’s great! That little backpage might be my favorite part of Astronomy magazine. And it’s good to know that the powers that be behind The Big Bang Theory love NASA goodies as much as the rest of us!
How lucky you are, i’m a huge fan of The Big Bang Theory !
Hope you enjoyed it ;-)
Paola