Episode 5 - A Helping Hand

That's right! A cliff-hanger ending! That should keep the watchers interested. After travelling to a distant neutron star the ship is out of energy and has no way of gathering enough energy to travel to another star.

Episode 5 Synopsis:

The captain is pacing deep in thought, trying to conjure a way out of this situation, he asks SAI for any solutions, to which she responds "Using basic plasma propulsion we can reach the nearest safe star for energy gathering within 100 years, though I'm quite sure that isn't an acceptable solution", and it sets in just how bad a situation this is for the crew. Right when all seems lost the ship receives another transmission from an unknown source but it's clear this time, the alien race is offering help and shortly after warps into view. A bright light engulfs the ship and seconds later the crew find themselves somewhere completely different, now in orbit around a huge blue star and the alien ship no where to be seen. SAI notifies the crew that they are now in orbit around the star Rigel and that energy reserves are rapidly filling, though she can detect no sign of the alien ship or how they arrived here so quickly. It is then that a calm voice speaks from behind the crew, it is an alien, one of the crew that just rescued them. He introduces himself and explains that his crew have been attempting to make contact with them for some time and that luckily they were able to follow them to the neutron star and retrieve them, and he has been left to join the crew and share any knowledge that he can. He and the captain leave the bridge and have a private conversation about the nature of his joining the crew and about his species' interest in the crew and then return to the crew on the bridge. The captain formally introduces the alien Noko as the newest crew member.

This particular episode is more about action than the previous ones, I felt that introducing an alien crew member would make the series more interesting, and this method of introduction felt like a good way to go about it. Though I feel like I should include information about the star Rigel that they are currently orbiting just so that each episode does include educational information. Expect an edit shortly!

Edit: Whoops! Wrong font for a few hours there! Deary me...

Episode 4 - Where Are We?

Neutron stars are some of the most extreme objects in the solar system, and I simply couldn't wait any longer to get to the really exciting stuff!

Episode 4 Synopsis:

After a much longer than usual jump through space the crew have found themselves a long way from home. The crew are clearly nervous about this and the captain asks SAI where they are. SAI responds "The orders given to me were a little vague sir, I have brought you to the nearest, smallest and most powerful star I could find", she has brought them to a neutron star 424 lightyears from Earth. On the monitor is a very distant and very small star, the crew don't really know what to make of it, seeing this SAI explains what the object they are looking at is a very rare and powerful star despite only being about 20km in diameter. The crew want to move closer but SAI informs them that moving closer is too dangerous. Readings are taken, showing that the star has a surface temperature of over 10million K and spewing out radio and x-rays from its rapidly rotating magnetic poles. The captain makes the decision to leave while they can, but the ship has used most of it's fuel getting here, unable to get close enough to the neutron star to gather energy they are stranded a very long way from home.

Episode Research:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutron_star

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PSR_J0108-1431

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulsar

The size relative size of a neutron star next to the island of Manhattan.

As I already mentioned, Neutron stars are some of the most extreme objects in the universe, the mass of 8 to 10x that of our sun compressed into a truly tiny sphere only 20km across, and spinning hundreds of times per second. Virtually everything about neutron stars are extreme!

Neutron stars are not born this way, they are the remnants of old massive stars and the process is quite complicated, I will explain the steps necessary.

'Main Sequence' stars generate their energy by converting hydrogen into helium, when the star has converted enough of the hydrogen (burnt enough fuel) reactions in the core stop causing it to contract. Reactions in the outer shell continue which causes the outer shell to expand into a 'red giant' phase. 

If the star is massive enough then after this phase ends the star will not contract into a white dwarf as with smaller stars, instead it will violently collapse causing a supernova, shedding the large outer layer. The core is left behind as a Neutron star, most of the mass of the star is retained in this tiny core.

Neutron stars spin extremely fast at first, up to hundreds of times per second. This is because the rotation of the spinning red supergiant is maintained as the star contracts extremely quickly, much like when an ice skater brings in their arms to speed up a spin. All of the momentum is retained but on a much smaller object. Very slowly over time this spinning slows down.

At their moment of creation neutron stars can be up to 1,000,000,000,000K but emit energy so quickly that this cools quickly to around 10,000,000K.

The extreme rotation of neutron stars causes them to have very strong magnetic fields, the magnetic poles are not necessarily aligned to the poles of the stars rotation.

Some neutron stars emit radio and x-rays and are named 'Pulsars', this is because the radio and x-rays are emitted from the magnetic poles, which rotate rapidly as the star rotates. This is detected as a 'pulse' as the beam passes quickly over the onlooker.

The gravity of a neutron star is so extreme that any object falling towards it is accelerated to such an extent that upon impact it is destroyed on an atomic level, instantly becoming identical to the matter making up the star.

The closest neutron star to Earth is PSR_J0108_1431 at 424 lightyears from Earth, and is the setting for this episode. This particular neutron star is a very old 'Pulsar' and has slowed to rotate every 0.8 seconds.

Episode 3 - Sirius

Episode 3 is all about the star Sirius!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sirius

Episode 3 Synopsis

The ship arrives at Sirius, 8 lightyears away from Earth the star appears blue rather than orange and is double the size of our Sun. The crew, initially amazed by the bright blue glow begin to scan the star as they orbit around it. Slowly another much smaller white star, about the size of Earth comes into view around the horizon of the large Sirius. After gathering data and energy from the large star the ship moves to look at the second smaller star, which most of the crew underestimate. After scanning has begun SAI informs the crew that the star was previously more than double the size of Sirius and because of this burned out much faster, and despite it's size the surface temperature of the small star is actually almost triple that of the larger star. All of the crew apart from the captain are surprised that such a small star could still output so much energy and heat, the crew excited by this start to shout at SAI orders to move to the nearest white dwarf star to them, SAI looks around to the captain and says "Sir?" as the engines begin to ready, to which he nods and the ship shoots off to it's next destination.

Research:

The Sirius star is the brightest star in the night sky, this is due to it's proximity to Earth, being the 7th closest star to our solar system and far more luminous than any of the others. It is still less bright than Venus and Jupiter appear in our night sky, and occasionally less bright than Mars. Sirius is 25 times brighter than our Sun.

Although Sirius appears as a single bright star it is in fact another binary system, the 2 stars are known as Sirius A and Sirius B. 

This image is from the Hubble Space Telescope, Sirius A is central, and you can just about make out Sirius B slightly below and left as a small dot.

Originally Sirius B was considerably larger than A, but being such a large star burnt through it's fuel (hydrogen) quickly, grew to a red supergiant and eventually shed it's outer layers to become a 'white dwarf' star around 120 million years ago. Sirius A being less than half the size of Sirius B during it's main sequence is burning it's fuel slower and is expected to finish it's main sequence (meaning that it will become a red supergiant) in around 1 billion years. 

The surface temperature of Sirius A (the larger one) is 9,900K (Kelvin) where as the surface temperature of the smaller star Sirius B is 25,000K, but being a white dwarf Sirius B has passed it's period of life where reaction is occurring in it's core, white dwarves slowly cool down and dim. The white dwarf of a star of 0.5 to 8 solar masses such as this one eventually dim and will become a 'black dwarf' though this process takes such a long time that non are currently thought to exist, almost all white dwarfs are still shining brightly and will for the foreseeable future.

The white dwarf star Sirius B is one of the larger white dwarves recorded, with an estimated solar mass approximately the same as our sun, compressed into a sphere the size of Earth.

It is important to remember that despite their size difference, the mass of Sirius A is only around double that of Sirius B. Sirius B effects the orbit of Sirius A more than it's size makes you think it would, they take 50 years to orbit around a barycenter still inside Sirius A but quite off-center.

I think that's enough fact to squeeze into the episode for now.

Matty out!

Episode 2 Redo

Episode 2 already had the start of the alien transmission storyline in it, now with that kicked forward into the first episode I just had to change this to a continuation, which is a minor change in synopsis form but obviously a much larger change if I had to change script writing. Thankfully, I don't!

Episode 2 Synopsis:

With their first mission behind them the crew set off towards the nearest star - Alpha Centauri; a solar system of 2 stars, 5 lightyears away! Relieved that the ship's prototype engines worked as expected the crew's celebrations are cut when the ship's systems detect a 3rd star not visible from Earth that is actually closer to us - Proxima Centauri, which they scan before moving on to their original destination. While gathering enery from the 2 stars the crew receive another mysterious broken transmission, after analysing the signal they find out that it is an alien message over 3000 years old, but there is no indication of where the signal came from. With no leads on the origin of the signal the crew have no choice but to continue to the next mission as planned, to the supermassive star Sirius.

Old Episode 2 Synopsis:

With their first mission behind them the crew set off towards the nearest star - Alpha Centauri; a solar system of 2 stars, 5 lightyears away! Along the way the ship's systems detect a 3rd star not visible from Earth that is actually closer to us - Proxima Centauri, which they scan before moving on to their original destination. Shortly after finishing the mission the crew receive a mysterious broken transmission from an unknown source, after analysing the signal they find out that it is an alien message over 3000 years old, but there is no indication of from where the signal came.

Episode 1 (Pilot) Redo

After a chat with my teachers we discussed that the episodes need more happening than just the facts about each of the planets.

Episode 1 Synopsis:

The team is assembled and after saying their good-byes they are ready for take off, after a final system check the crew blast off into space! To ensure all of the equipment is completely accurate the first mission is simple; to scan data from all of the planets in our solar system and to gather energy for the first interstellar expedition. Along the way we find out many interesting facts about our neighboring planets and their moons, and unexpectedly the ship intercepts a mysterious transmission from an unknown origin but unable to recieve anything but static they continue with the mission. Then finally with the mission complete and energy at full, the crew are anxious but ready to test the prototype propulsion technology to blast off towards the next objective, Alpha Centauri - 5 lightyears away.

Old Episode 1 Synopsis:

The team is assembled and after saying their good-byes they are ready for take off, after a final system check the crew blast off into space! To ensure all of the equipment is completely accurate the first mission is simple; to scan data from all of the planets in our solar system and gather energy for the first interstellar expedition. Along the way we find out many interesting facts about our neighboring planets and their moons, before finally with the mission complete and energy at full, the crew launch into space towards their next destination - Alpha Centauri; 5 lightyears away.

Hopefully this should be enough for the pilot episode. There's already quite a lot of information to squeeze into the double episode, the whole solar system is a big thing to cover in one episode! Later episodes should have more room for more drama.

Youth Marketing Research - 06.11.11

Doing a little bit of extra research about target audiences, looking more specifically at 'youth marketing'.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Youth_marketing

In this article it says how the term 'youth marketing' typically refers to a demographic (group) of 12 - 34 years. Then more specific marketing aimed at smaller age ranges:

Tween marketing - 8 to 12 years.

Teen marketing - 13 to 19 years.

College marketing - 18 to 23 years.

Young adult marketing - 22 years +

As I already mentioned in my last post (here), I'll be focusing primarily on the tween and teen market.

"Successful brands marketing to youth have a foundation in or association with key interests and drivers among youth: music, sports, fashion, video gaming and technology, among others."

What this basically means is that it is these mediums that are particularly attractive to the youth market, for both advertising of, and as the platform for the product itself.

"Youth marketing strategies commonly include television advertising, magazine advertising and online marketing. Today young people expect to be able to learn about, interact and be entertained with brands or services targeting them online. Other common youth marketing tactics include entertainment marketing, music marketing, sports marketing, event marketing, viral marketing, school and college programs, product sampling and influencer marketing."

This section tells us the most effective methods of advertisement to the youth market. As expected the most commonly used mediums are TV, magazine and online. 

A quick but non-the-less helpful post. Back to drawing!

Target Audience Research - 06.11.11

This is something that I've been putting a lot of thought into over the last few weeks, and I thought it about time to finally get a post done on the subject of the target audience of the series.

One of the problems I have with the target audience selection is the fact that I'm doing a primarily educational series about space, educational series most often being aimed at preteens or very young teens.

This is a problem for me because my series, being about space will most likely be quite confusing to that particular age group, so the difficulty I have is aiming an educational series at a slightly older audience - young teens.

There are various sources for target audience categories on the internet, but one I found with a neat little table is here: http://www.audiencesuk.org/data-and-resources/jargonbuster/A/age-group-or-age-categories

This table shows all of the categories of age groups, and the sub groups they consist of. I will be aiming my particular series between the late 'Under 15' and early '15 to 24' group:

This is the age group that I and many of my friends began to watch sci-fi series like Star Trek and Stargate etc, often this interest in sci-fi persists even later. I for example still enjoy watching programs like Star Wars: The Clone Wars despite it being primarily aimed at a younger audience. Regardless, interest in sci-fi programs like these usually begins in these age groups, which is where series such as Star Wars: The Clone Wars are aimed and where I intend to aim mine.

Now with a target audience firmly in mind, and after some discussion with various people and my tutors, we have decided that to make the plot interesting enough for people to continue watching, I should mix in some fictional story-based elements along with the facts etc.

This does also affect the presentation of the series, as I mentioned in a previous post, I had originally intended to present the series in a cartoony CG style, but given the slight bump in the target audience I decided to go with a slightly more realistic CG style (check out my initial character designs here to get an idea), which will be less patronizing to the upper end of the target audience without alienating the younger end.

Anyway, enough typing for now! Back to drawing I must go.