Amsterdam, april 4, 2009.
Spiral Galaxy was first publically screened on april 4, 2009 at the Science Centre NEMO in Amsterdam, during the 'Weekend of the Stars'. It was a success. The room was almost filled up with some 150 people and the storytellers themselves were there as well!
After the screening there was opportunity for questions and discussion
with the storyteller, the filmmakers and the public, moderated by
Dutch astronomy journalist Govert Schilling.
Prof. de Jager told how in 1944, after Henk van de Hulst had predicted
the 21 cm emission from the hydrogen-atom, he did similar calculations on the
deuterium-atom. He found a result for the wavelenght where the emission
would be expected. Ir. Lex Muller searched to
detect this emission and did not find it. This was to be expected as it
is be really weak, since deuterium is much less abundant in the
Universe than hydrogen.
When Pieter-Rim de Kroon was asked about the similarities between his big documentary Dutch Light and this film he replied that both films deal with watching and observing.
The session ended with Govert Schilling asking Prof. Adriaan Blaauw what he thought he would regret not to be there when it will be discovered. Prof. Blaauw replied: 'That is an easy question to ask and a difficult one to reply to...we have seen that in the past we went from one Sun to an understanding that there are many Suns, from one Galaxy to many galaxies. And so, in about one hundred years it might well be that people say: Of course, everybody knows that there are many Universes!'
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