During the first series of the BBC's revived Dr Who, revival, the good doc and his companion Rose found themselves among an elite band of "aliens" in the distant future, writes Lorna Siggins.
This group of the "great and good" had been able to afford to leave their home planet before it died of. . .well, global warming. From their comfortable space base, the elite could gaze out on a red sun, expanding as it ran out of hydrogen.
That fiction is our reality - only about four to five billion years away, and "nothing to lose sleep over", as the doctor observed. Along with little old Earth, a number of inner planets will be engulfed as the sun sheds its outer layers to form a planetary nebula, after which it will be little more than a tiny white dwarf.
All very humbling. Like all astronomers, Prof Mike Redfern of NUI Galway is in the business of being humbled almost every single day - and on many nights, when he sits in his observatory in a back garden close to the river Corrib, and looks out on the universe through a telescope linked to a computer screen.
This 40cm (16-inch) Imbusch telescope was made in Germany, using mirrors made in St Petersburg, Russia, and it is central to the university's astronomical work. Like so many of its counterparts around the world, its technology has allowed a very precise mapping of the universe over the last 150 years. Such data has been fed into computer-generated models which allow one to cheat the speed of light and race through the cosmos at the click of a mouse.
Yet for centuries before that, as Prof Redfern explained at a recent open evening in the observatory, an extraordinary amount of mapping was done with the most rudimentary instruments. Even before Galileo's telescope, many stars and constellations and planets were identified and named by the Chinese, Norse, African, native American and Polynesians. But none of these was said to be as systematic as the studies done by people living in the lands around the Silk Road between China and Arabia.
Muslim astronomers, some travelling as Bedouins in the desert, gave names to stars such as Rigel, from the Arabic ar rijl al-jabbar, the foot or knee of the male hunter Orion, which Bedouins believe to be a female huntress. Similarly, Betelgeuse, also part of Orion, is derived from the Arabic yadal jawza or "hand of the central one". Contrary to popular belief, Rigel is actually brighter than Betelgeuse - popularly called "beetlejuice", the professor told us.
Prof Redfern exudes a Dr Who-like enthusiasm, and his Imbusch observatory could have been our Tardis as he transported us beyond our solar system, which is in itself a "suburb" of the Milky Way. Since the Hubble space telescope's revolutionary charting of 1999, the Milky Way itself is now known to be just one of 100,000 million galaxies. We are particularly fortunate in Ireland be able to view the clusters above, he noted. Energy-rich states such as Holland have so much artificial light that no one can catch a proper glimpse of the night sky.
We are fortunate also - on the west coast, at least - to have an academic who draws a packed house every time his free public open evenings are advertised.
A star of a different kind - and one who would probably cringe at the description - is the Belfast mountaineer Dawson Stelfox. He has been as close as any of his counterparts to the upper atmosphere, having inhaled it through an oxygen mask on top of Everest more than 13 years ago. Like Edmund Hillery, Stelfox is one of a minority of climbers who has made a genuine commitment to put something back into an environment which is synonymous with his own success.
Along with his fellow climbers on that first and successful Irish expedition, Stelfox established the Irish Himalayan Trust to fund the education of participants on the expedition, such as the young Nepalese cook assistant, Dhan Khaling Rai. Dhana, as he is known, qualified as a teacher and founded a company, Wilderplaces Nepal. It runs cultural treks in the remote Kaku valley, home to his Khaling Rai people, as well as adventure treks and climbs to peaks between 5,700 and 6,600 metres high, in co-operation with the Irish Everest climber and mountain guide Robbie Fenlon.
The IHT and another foundation, named after Irish mountaineer Dermot Bouchier Hayes, have now funded a new Irish Nepalese Educational Trust (INET), with a remit to finance educational projects in the Himalayan area. Among its supporters are pupils and teachers at Alexandra College, Dublin, who have raised €30,000 towards the cost of a school in Dhana's home village - Phuleli in the Khumbu region of Nepal.
A Montessori school which doubles up as a community centre is now being built to a design has been drawn up by Stelfox, in consultation with Phuleli. INET has more plans, but the emphasis will be on supporting initiatives devised by - not for - the Rai community, according to its director, Jane Fenlon. Contributions to INET can be made by lodging to account number 39630675, Bank of Ireland, Blackrock, Dublin, sort code 90-10-28. Further information is available from INET at (01) 2855183 or inet1@eircom.net