Good evening and welcome to my home in Selsey
and a very special Sky At Night programme - the 700th.
The longest-running television programme in the world.
This programme is dedicated to answering questions you've sent in.
And with me, are friends of The Sky At Night,
old and new.
Well, I grew up with The Sky At Night.
It is one of the reasons that I became interested
in astronomy and physics.
I had no idea I'd be on the 700th programme.
I had no idea I'd be on any programme, so it's wonderful for me.
Well, I'm not an expert but I'm very much an enthusiast
and it will be my job to read out the viewer's questions,
be the voice of the viewer for the gathered panel of experts
on the programme.
And there's been one or two occasions when I've put myself in Patrick's shoes.
Good evening.
Now, what I want to do in these talks is tell you about some
of the interesting things you can see in the night sky each month.
Well, I got to know the Sky At Night viewers over the years.
They're always sharp. They never let us get away with anything,
so whatever questions they've asked,
they're going to keep us on our toes.
Once a month, Patrick's home in Selsey becomes home to Sky At Night.
Today, we're turning his dining room into the set for this special programme.
Astronomers are dropping in from all over the UK.
Hello, Patrick.
We've met before. We met once, years ago. How are you?
'The Sky At Night viewers have sent us over 1,000 questions
'and the experts are here to answer them.'
Patrick. Yes? Hello. Hello.
Nice to see you again.
First up, Professor Alan Fitzsimmons
for your questions on the solar system.
Welcome to everybody. Glad to see you here.
Right, can we have our first question?
Here it is, from John A Tomkins of Skelmersdale.
"If all the planets in the solar system were formed
"from the same cloud of material, by a similar mechanism,
"why are they all so different, in particular, Saturn?"
Well, of course, we've got eight planets, or at least now
we have eight planets in the solar system.
And we can first of all split them up into two groups.
We've got the rocky planets that are closer to the sun:
Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars.
And then, further out, we've got the giant planets,
Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune.
We think what we're seeing there is kind of a relic of the time
when the planets formed, because when the planets were forming,
coming together from the material swirling around the sun,
the sun itself was also forming.
And in its very early days, it went through a very energetic phase,
and during this phase,
the star is very luminous. It emits a copious amount of energy.
That has a dramatic effect on any material surrounding it.
The material closest to the star is simply swept out of lighter elements.
So if a planet's forming, the rocky elements, the heavy elements
can stay there and they can form the planet.
But there's not much gas left around to form the atmospheres.
Whereas further out, in the solar system from the star,
there's much more gas left there
and that can get on to the forming planets
and they become giants, the giant planets that we see today.
But we've seen exo-planets, planets around other stars, haven't you?
Where there are these Jupiter-sized planets,
very close to the stars, called "hot Jupiters".
Which destroys this beautiful theory. How does that fit?
That you can get a gas chain very close to a very luminous star?
Well, we still think the gas giants form at some particular distance
from the star, but they don't stay there.
In fact there's evidence in our own solar system,
that after the formation, the planets moved.
Not only the giant planets, but also the inner planets, such as the Earth.
Has there been any migration, in fact? Absolutely.
Planetary migration is what we believe explains
the existence of these hot Jupiter-type planets, close to their parent stars.
That's certainly one idea.
Right, can we go on to question two? Sure.
I was just going to ask one thing, sometimes you hear Jupiter described as a failed star.
Is that right?
Well... No!
We believe stars... No. ..and planets may form differently.
A star is purely gas.
It's the condensation of a nebula all coming together
and reaching such tremendous pressures and temperatures in the centre that nuclear fusion starts.
At one time, it was thought maybe Jupiter's like this as well.
But we now believe it has formed in possibly the same way as the other planets.
It's got a rocky core, somewhere in the centre of Jupiter,
there is probably a rocky core, perhaps even the size of the Earth.
So it's still right to call Jupiter a gas giant,
because it's pretty much gas all the way down,
but at some point, you might hit a rocky surface. There's a surface there somewhere. Somewhere, yes.
You probably don't want to go there, though. Well, let's go on. Right...
Next, we have this question from Baz Pierce from Bolton.
"We've all been told about the fate of the inner rocky planets when our sun dies,
"but what will happen to the gas giants and ice giants in the outer solar system?"
We should talk about what's going to happen when the sun dies.
Do you want me to answer that? Yes.
Some of you think the sun is burning like a coal fire, but it's not.
No, it's nuclear reactions at the centre,
turning hydrogen into helium. Exactly.
And at some point you run out of hydrogen at the core of the sun
and then it will shift into being a red giant.
So, a giant star that's converting helium into heavier elements.
A red giant and bad for the Earth? Yes, well, exactly.
Well, perhaps. Because the red giant....
I know. It would be very hot. That's true, I don't recommend hanging around.
We've got about three to four billion years to invent interstellar travel.
So the sun will swell up to be a red giant.
The outside, the surface of the sun will be roughly where we are now, as the Earth,
the Earth may have spiralled outward slightly as the sun loses mass, so we may escape.
But it still won't be very pleasant.
You'll have this red giant phase that lasts for another billion years or so.
So, what happens to the outer solar system?
Well, during this time, it will be warmed up.
And means that at
Jupiter, Saturn and Uranus, all three of those planets,
at that distance from the sun,
temperatures will, for a while at least, a short while,
reach the current day temperature for the Earth.
So maybe you wouldn't want to live in the atmospheres of those giant planets,
but you could set up camp on the moons and you wouldn't be that uncomfortable,
though I'm not sure what you'd would do about an atmosphere.
And of course, at the end of the red super-giant phase,
you have the creation of a planetary nebula,
which is going to be absolutely gorgeous.
The final death throes of the a star life. Beautiful.
But will happen is that the outer planets will spiral outwards
and so by the end of the light on to the sun,
all the other planets will be twice as far from the sun as they are now.
And that's going to be the last, final glory days of the solar system.
Not for a while yet, though. Not for a while, not for a while.
We'll cover it on The Sky At Night when we get there. New question, please.
I was going to ask, if we do need to evacuate come this time,
maybe evacuate to Pluto, will the human race fit on Pluto?
Isn't it true that the human race could fit on the Isle of Wight, if we all stood up?
So, I think we're fine. I think we've got plenty of room.
We just all have to be really friendly.
I think our message to our viewers is, don't panic.
Next question.
Yes, I love your description, Patrick, "When the sun dies, one thing's for sure,
"I won't be there."
THEY ALL LAUGH
Next question. I wouldn't take that bet. Absolutely.
Now, this is from Luke Butler aged 11 from High Wycombe.
"Is there a heaven, and if so, which planet would it be on?"
Oh.
I'll steer clear of the theology,
but the place where I'd most like to be in the solar system,
I think sitting on the surface of Europa watching Jupiter in the sky,
which would be this sort of size, and just sitting there.
I'll have something to keep me warm,
I'll have a source of food sent from Earth, please, and a bar.
And I will sit back and watch the weather on Jupiter. Plenty of ice.
Yes, I've got the ice. That's mine. Where would you be?
I'll go for Iapetus, Saturn's eighth satellite.
You'd have a lovely view of the rings from there, a nice view of the sky as well.
Interesting world, yes. Give me Iapetus.
So you've got one of Saturn's moons. I've got one of Jupiter's. Alan?
I'm going to wimp out of the theology question as well.
We all are!
I'm going to plump for here, because I find all the planets
and all the moons and all the bodies in our solar system fascinating.
But I don't think any of them are quite as beautiful as our planet.
Heaven is supposed to be beautiful,
so if it exists, it's got to be here.
Heaven is a place on earth, in fact. Absolutely!
I know. It's called Selsey. Excellent. Good, good.
My favourite picture in the history of space exploration
is the pale blue dot picture, which Carl Sagan asked Voyager to take
famously from beyond the orbit of Neptune.
That's the Earth just as one pixel suspended in a sunbeam,
because it's very close to the sun from out there.
So I might go for that view, beyond the orbit of Neptune,
so I could see my own pale blue dot picture with my own eyes.
I think Pluto, as well, where you would see the sun from that great distance, and its moon,
Charon, dominating much of the sky.
That would be enormously peaceful, to survey the entire solar system.
It would be rather nice. So we've spread out amongst the solar system.
Either that or Gallifrey.
Well, Alan, thank you very much indeed. Great to have you back.
Come back again soon.
It's over 80 years since Patrick first used his telescopes
to look at the moon and the planets.
He's recorded everything he's seen in minute detail.
Astronomer Paul Abel has been going through Patrick's log books
to show Jon some of the more unusual observations.
One of the wonderful things about being here is that every room is so richly full of archives.
It is, and this is my favourite. This is the slide room.
It's just filled with recordings going back to the '60s.
But this, this is the shelf for me.
This is where all of Patrick's observing books are kept.
His very own observing books where he would record his own observations.
Here's a great example. Yes, this is a good one. This is Saturn.
There's a nice story attached to this and this particular era.
When Saturn was edge-on, see these little dots here?
These are the satellites of Saturn,
and this was when the rings were edge-on.
Patrick recorded a dot that shouldn't have been there,
and later on he realised that was the satellite Janus.
It was discovered... He recorded it, but didn't know he had recorded it,
and so was robbed of this great discovery.
That's Sir Patrick's. That's his discovery. His discovery. Brilliant.
So, onwards to the gas giants. You remember the year of Voyager?
Yes, of course.
Well, one of the greatest mysteries about Jupiter at the time
was that it was a big radio transmitter.
One thing Patrick did with four other amateur astronomers,
I think this shows amateurs can do science and make contributions.
You see these, you've got discrete features
like the great red spot, and these belts.
What people wanted to know was, were the radio features tied up
with features on the surface?
What Patrick and a couple of amateurs showed is no, it's not.
In fact, the radio effect is entirely tied up with moon Io.
And Patrick and his team managed to show that.
A nice description just there.
MIMICS SIR PATRICK: "By the time I got home, Jupiter was treed out."
"Treed out" turns up a lot.
"Jellyfish", too, turn up a lot, and this mysterious "Spode's Law",
which when everything goes wrong, Spode strikes again. Spode's Law.
Or, "Spode has set up his HQ on Saturn tonight."
That's another one. This is wonderful. "Odd things went on.
"We persuaded the dome to move the right way."
"Periodically, motors whirred, mysterious lights flashed on and off,
"the platform creaked alarmingly, and once there was
"a small fire in the telescope pillar due to a short-circuit.
"These things happen.
"Naturally, the driving clock went on strike, but we managed."
It's brilliant, isn't it?
If you are have a disaster, record it with wit. Good stuff.
Back to more recent times,
what we now know Patrick is fairly famous for is the moon.
Oh, indeed.
One thing he did actually discover is the crater Einstein.
One of the things he used to do back in the '50s and '60s was look at the limb of the moon, the extreme edge.
Because, as you know, the moon wobbles in orbit,
so sometimes you can see stuff that's on the far side.
One night Patrick did manage to pick up crater Einstein and made the discovery.
Now, was that the feature that was later rediscovered by the Americans?
No, that's the Mare Orientale,
and that was discovered by a German chap before Patrick and the Americans.
(Don't tell Patrick.)
Patrick discovered it properly. He did.
He puts in the mistakes, as well.
In the solar book, he's observing the sun, and he says,
"Wonderful view of the sun, would dearly love to carry on observing.
"Alas, I have locked the keys in the observatory."
Why put that in?
Oh, it's a nice moment that would just remind you of the observations that day.
There's a very young Patrick Moore with his telescope. 1952.
Yes, The Sky At Night hadn't been thought of at that time.
Patrick has used his 12.5-inch telescope
since 1945 to study the moon.
But it wasn't until the arrival of space probes
that he was able to see its far side for the first time.
I can't show you any pictures taken from the moon's surface,
but we can show you what I think is a very reliable drawing
of what it may be like.
This very early Sky At Night was about that discovery.
Who better, then, to answer your questions about the moon
than Patrick himself?
And in many ways, the moon is a very strange world indeed.
Questions. Number one, Jon.
Plenty of them, such as this from Jason Gillingham in Kettering.
"If the moon is covered with evidence of meteorite damage,
why do we not see meteorites hitting the moon now?"
Well, the craters were formed by impact. We know that now.
In those days, the far-off days,
large objects floating around were far more common than they are now.
And to see a new crater on the moon,
it would have to be hit by a fairly sizeable meteorite.
That hasn't happened yet.
What would that look like, as we see the moon,
so familiar in the sky, for it to be hit by a meteorite?
Would there be smoke, explosions? How would it appear?
A meteorite to make a really large crater would be
most unlikely now. They've been used up.
There have been some really quite clever studies
looking at the dark side of the moon during meteor showers,
and normally things burn up as they enter the Earth's atmosphere,
but cameras are so sensitive now, you actually can pick up
the very faint flashes of these tiny particles hitting the dark side.
I know you are sceptical. I am rather sceptical. But I believe.
I think this data looks quite convincing.
So we do see the very smallest of meteorites.
You may be right, but I am not convinced.
No more large craters here. One day, certainly. Next question.
OK, this from Adrian Hodge in Southport.
Why does the moon rotate at the same rate as the Earth?
What he means is something rather different.
The moon spins on its axis in 27.3 days.
The moon goes round the Earth in exactly the same period.
And that's why the moon keeps the same face turned towards the Earth.
The reason for that is quite simply tidal friction.
Isn't the moon moving away slowly, as well?
The moon is receding about four centimetres per year,
being driven outwards by these forces.
It won't vanish in the distance just yet.
There will be no more eclipses, which would be a shame.
You ruin total eclipses, because as the moon gets smaller in the sky,
it can't cover the sun.
So enjoy total eclipses while you can.
For the solar eclipse of 1968, right in the middle of the Cold War,
the Sky At Night went to the frozen wastelands of Siberia.
The Russians initially refused Patrick a visa,
but at the last minute relented, and he arrived just in time.
This is a glorious sight. There is the diamond ring.
You can see the prominence on the left of your screen.
There is the re-appearing sun once again.
And the light is coming back to the valley.
It's time for our next guest, Dr Lucie Green.
Hi, by the way. Hello, lovely to see you again. Nice to see you, too.
She studies every flicker of the sun, our nearest star.
Well, let's have our first question about the sun. Mm.
Thanks to Bart van der Putten from Amsterdam for this one.
"Who was first to realise the sun was just another star,
"like the thousands visible in the night sky?"
Er... I wasn't there. And I don't have any clue. Lucie?
I thought that was a really nice question.
It is about making that mental leap about what our local star is.
And I was trying to find out who made that first mental leap.
It's quite hard to find in the literature.
You can read a lot about the myths,
the deity that was assigned to the sun,
but when it comes to thinking about the sun being the same as the other stars,
I could track it back as far as the 16th century
and an Italian monk-come-philosopher called Giordano Bruno.
He is quite famous because he was also interested in an infinite universe, plurality of worlds.
And he thought that, in fact the other way around.
Stars are the same as our sun, but they are just much, much further away.
But then we can go one step further than that.
Because to really be able to say
the sun and the stars are all the same thing, you need spectroscopy.
So, with the developments of spectroscopy in the 1800s and 1900s,
that gave us the techniques and the physics to be able to say confidently, yes,
yes, the sun and stars are all the same kind of object.
Thank you, Lucie. Next question.
OK, this from John Moore, from Peterborough.
"Solar prominences are huge,
"but on what timescale does a prominent actually occur?
"A minute? An hour? A day? A year? Or more?"
Yeah, so, prominences, one of the most beautiful phenomena on the sun.
Absolutely amazing, and they are gigantic.
They stretch for hundreds of thousands of kilometres.
And they are beautiful.
And they don't take long to form, considering their size.
So over, maybe, a day, you'd get a prominence forming.
And you can look at them in hydrogen alpha and see them forming over this time.
Once they form on the sun, they can last for week after week
after week, and then suddenly erupt when we least expect it.
So why do they suddenly erupt? What causes the sudden change?
Well, it is to do with the magnetic fields.
So the structures are formed
because of a magnetic configuration that can hold the material in place.
And the magnetic field evolves, and it can destabilise.
And at that point, the structure erupts into the solar system.
Interesting, because I thought of them, actually, as explosions.
But you say they're not, really.
It is a magnetic field effect first or and then the material follows.
That's right. So I think about solar flares in terms of an explosion.
But a filament eruption or a corona mass ejection is different.
It is a lifting off of the material because of forces in the magnetic...
They are certainly lovely to observe. They're beautiful.
Is it true that the sun becomes four million tons lighter every second?
That's right, because of the fusion happening in its core.
Listen for one moment.
Between those two taps of my hand on this glass table,
the son lost 4 million tonnes.
Don't worry, there is plenty left!
THEY ALL LAUGH
Well, thank you, Lucie.
We've had many questions about telescopes.
Over the years,
the Sky At Night has often featured Patrick's own observatories.
And it's from this dome with this telescope that I've spent
a lot of time in the last few months looking at the planet Mars.
This is my new one. I can't resist showing it to you.
This is my 15.5-inch reflector. As you can see, it's pretty massive.
I have my own observatory at Selsey,
where things don't always go according to plan.
HE BANGS
Flaming thing's stuck.
Astronomer Pete Lawrence frequently uses Patrick's telescopes,
and he took Jon on a tour.
This is the first time I have seen Patrick's garden in the day!
Do you know, that is a good point.
I haven't been here many times during the day.
This is Patrick's 5-inch Cooke refractor. Have you ever seen it?
I have never met this telescope before.
You're in for a treat now, then, Jon. I'll let you go in first.
I will just take the roof off here, Jon. OK. Let's take the roof off.
It's got a roll-off roof.
You can see it's got this amazing bicycle chain arrangement here.
Wonderfully mechanical. It is. Like a Wallace and Gromit invention.
I can see it working like that. And unlock the telescope.
There it is, ready to be used.
Patrick did quite a lot of solar observing with this,
so you're basically pointing at the sun
and then had a screen at the back here where the light was projected.
You could see the sun's disc.
Never looking at it directly. Never look at the sun directly, no.
That is very dangerous.
If you've a telescope as big and powerful as the one across the way,
why would you need this, which appears smaller and less powerful?
I think they all have their own area where they excel.
This one is particularly good for planets.
Rather fond of these antennas, too.
These are slow-motion controls, so you line up the telescope with the finder,
you use them to fine-tune the position.
I haven't broke it by doing that, have I? Not at all!
This is the 5-inch. Shall we go next door and look at the 15-inch? I think we should!
The telescope this one orbits around. That's a good way of describing it.
This is the moon of that one.
OK, Jon. Here we are. This is the famous one, isn't it?
It is. This is Patrick's 15.5-inch telescope,
the largest he's got in his garden.
This one's on another equatorial mount.
So you can see it pointing up towards the pole there.
So you can move it round left and right,
and it follows the same arc in the sky as the other one.
The semi-diurnal arc. Good gracious, Jon! Have you swallowed an encyclopaedia?
It's a phrase I learned today, and I was determined to use it.
Which brings us to our questions.
Here's one from Paul Boswell from Newhaven.
I have a 3-inch reflector telescope with a few eyepiece lenses
ranging from 20mm to 4mm.
What can I expect to see with such lowly equipment?
That's not lowly equipment at all.
The first telescope I used was 40mm across,
and I saw wonderful things with that.
I think the trick would be to use the lowest-power eyepiece,
so that's the 20mm eyepiece. That gives you the lowest power and the widest field.
But the moon,
the craters on the moon easy to see with a telescope like that.
Jupiter, which is up at the moment.
You've got the four Galilean moons dancing around either side.
You'll definitely see the disc of Jupiter and the belts running across.
Others are Saturn in the early morning, and Venus.
Venus doesn't show much detail, it's just very bright.
It does show a phase, but not much detail.
Deep-sky stuff. There are lots of clusters. The Seven Sisters cluster.
You've got the Beehive cluster in Cancer. That's a lovely sight.
And also the Orion nebula again. You must have a look at the Orion nebula.
This from Gary Walker, in Banstead.
"If the star Betelgeuse explodes as a supernova any time soon,
"would it be hazardous to the human eye to observe it with amateur telescopes?"
No, I don't think there would be a problem,
but it could potentially be very bright.
Betelgeuse is the star in the upper left-hand corner of Orion.
It is what's known as a red super-giant star,
and it's running out of fuel, basically.
What astronomers think is going to happen to it
is it will turn into a supernova.
I think the biggest problem is going to be
the constellation of Orion will change as a consequence of the supernova.
Betelgeuse literally means armpit of the central one, so Orion is going to lose his armpit.
So get a shoulder pad instead.
Now, this from George Brown at Wester Ross, in Scotland.
"When viewing images through my telescope, everything is black and white.
"Why is it that the Hubble images I've seen are always in colour?
"Is the colour real, or added during image processing?"
Basically, for an average amateur-sized telescope,
if you look at an object, a deep-sky object,
a nebula or a galaxy, there isn't enough light coming through
to stimulate the sensors in the back of your eye.
You see glorious monochrome.
Hubble uses filters to take monochrome pictures,
and then these are combined in a way to produce a full-colour image.
So the colours aren't false, they are just through different filters,
and put together in a certain way.
Well, that's good to know. No cheating with Hubble.
And at the end of that round, Pete, you scored 28 points. Yes!
Dr Lewis Dartnell is an astrobiologist.
Hi, Patrick. How are you doing? Nice to see you again.
It's his job to work out if there is life out there,
and where the aliens might be.
Well, what questions do we have about this?
Now, this comes from Morgan in Taunton, aged nine.
"Do you think there is life out there, like aliens?"
That a good question. Children have the best questions.
And the hardest to answer.
I think so, and I think that alien life,
or extra-terrestrial life, is a likelihood.
It's probable enough that it's worthwhile to go out and look for it.
But I think there is a distinction between primitive life,
bacterial life that could survive on places like the frozen desert of Mars,
and then intelligent life that would have to be complex and big quite fragile,
like a human being.
To have intelligent life, that might be able to
have a conversation with us over radio, it would need a planet.
Its home planet is probably a lot like Earth.
It is interesting to look at the shift in this
over the time of the Sky At Night.
This used to be the astronomer's problem. Now it is a biologist's problem. What do you need for life?
If you have those conditions, if you have water, liquid water,
you are in the Goldilocks zone, what else do you need?
How likely is it life will begin? Then it may be a sociologist's problem.
I think, myself, the key may be Mars.
If we find any trace of life on Mars, and can prove it's not
Earth contamination, that will show that life has appeared
in our own solar system on two planets,
and that will be a pointer to the fact life is common.
What is interesting is we see complex carbon chemistry out there in space,
like amino acids.
They are in meteorites, the building blocks of life.
So it seems the building blocks are common across the solar system.
If life happens to appear, will intelligence appear?
This again is a... It hasn't on the earth.
THEY LAUGH
It's not intelligence you care about. It's technology.
Will technology to let us communicate...
Yes, life that would make itself conspicuous in the galaxy,
would have industry or be beaming signals.
By that definition, we weren't intelligent
until 60 years ago, when we started beaming radio waves and television.
I thought you meant when the Sky At Night started!
Does life have to be carbon-based?
Does it necessarily always need liquid water,
or it's what we're most familiar with here?
Perhaps it's being a bit blinkered and egocentric.
We're water-based and carbon-based, so the first good point, I think, is that we know that works.
We're good examples of it, so it makes most sense
to go for stuff that we know works and we'd be able to recognise
if we went to Mars or Europa.
Carbon has a lot of advantages, it makes more bonds,
and more different types of bonds, than anything else.
It's stable, so there are good reasons to think that we chose well.
Would they look like us? There's not much outward resemblance
between a jellyfish and a man.
They're both carbon-based. This is true.
One point that strikes me here,
every time we try to make ourselves important,
we ensure we're not. Nature pushes us back down on our bottom again, doesn't it?
We thought the Earth was the centre of the universe, then the sun,
then our galaxy. That's not true. We're a very unimportant universe.
In our galaxy, 100,000 million stars.
We can see 1,000 million galaxies.
That's only part of them, and I can't believe in all that host
we are the only examples of technological life. A lot of lottery tickets out there.
I don't want to look up at the 100 billion stars and the 100 billion galaxies
and think that we're unique. There's something scary about that prospect.
One of the great frustrations, I feel, is that this IS
one of the biggest questions, if not the biggest question, you could ask.
We suspect there may be alien life on Mars,
and yet we've not dedicated a mission yet to go and look for it.
I know that Exo-Mars, the joint NASA-ESA mission, is going to go.
What is the date for that? 10 years?
2018 we're looking for launch. As I say, it has slipped a little bit.
If we ever do discover it,
it will be the greatest discovery of all time from every point of view.
And I'd love to see it on The Sky At Night. Well, I'd love to try.
Lewis, thank you very much. Thank you, Patrick. Always a pleasure.
Now, Patrick, many of the questions that have been coming in
have been all about you and your home here in Selsey,
and your collection of astronomical artwork, and your many, many books.
And we've unearthed an old edition of The Sky At Night
on Betamax video, which gives us some rather nice clues
into how you got started in astronomy. Oh, dear.
Good evening.
I say, how terribly interesting.
Now, let's see if everything is as it should be.
That's one of mine, and that's one of mine.
That's one of mine, that's one of mine,
and that's one of Arthur's. Bless him.
Still doing his mysterious world, chasing yetis.
Now, as you know, at the time of the very first edition of The Sky At Night in 1957,
I was most reassured to meet a future version of myself from the 50th anniversary
of the programme in 2007.
This was very, very encouraging and very charming indeed,
and so now, if my calculations are correct,
and they usually are, this should be around about the time
of the 700th edition of The Sky At Night in the year 2011.
So I thought I'd come to that very special anniversary
from my very special anniversary in 1982, the 25th anniversary of the programme,
and see if I can help my future self out once again.
I think that shall be very, very splendid indeed.
Good Lord! Well, well, well.
Patrick, how very terribly nice to see you once again.
Nice to see you. What year do you come from?
1982, time of the 25th anniversary of The Sky At Night.
That was a good year, wasn't it?
Very, very good year. It was indeed.
So, for the 700th edition,
I understand we are trying our very, very best to answer
the very intelligent questions from our intelligent and dedicated viewers?
Yes. Let's see what they asked us.
Yes, let's see the nature of the questions being asked in 2011.
Graham Hall from Barry. "Sir Patrick..." Oh, are we a Sir now?
I am now, but I wasn't then. Oh, I'm looking forward to that.
"Sir Patrick, if you were offered by NASA,
"would you swap your 700 programmes
"in return for a one-way trip to Mars?"
No, a two-way trip might be different,
but a one-way trip, definitely not.
I am fascinated by Mars, but it is not a place
I would want to stay for very long, I don't think.
I think that's absolutely the right answer.
John Roach of Aberdeen, thank you for your question.
"Is Sir Patrick really the only living human to have met
"the first man to fly, to go into space and land on the moon?"
I can't be sure, but I think it probably is true.
The first man on the moon, Neil Armstrong, the first man in space,
Yuri Gagarin, and finally Orville Wright, the first man to fly.
I met him when I was learning how to fly
at the very start of the War, way back in 1939-40.
Orville Wright, a very mild-mannered man of great humility. Very much so.
Next, from Alan Hartmeyer in Amsterdam, the Netherlands,
"what are the cartoon-like pictures
"that can sometimes be seen in Sir Patrick's office?
"They seem to be very strange creatures."
They are indeed.
Drawn by my mother, who was a very clever artist.
No-one can say that I'm wrong.
All her creatures are nice, they're benevolent.
They were very benevolent aliens indeed.
She had the music and the arts.
I got the music, I didn't get the arts.
Let's have another question here,
this from Adrian Asprey from Tamworth.
"First of all, many congratulations on your 700th episode. You rock."
What a modern term.
"Now, if there was one thing you could have an answer to
"regarding lunar observations, what would it be?
"What has had you scratching your head after all these years?"
On the moon, when you see these transient lunar phenomena -
TLP, little glows.
We're still a bit uncertain to what they really are, but they're all right.
Just what causes them, we're not sure as yet, even now.
Still don't know?
So, thank you for your question, and that is the answer to it.
And finally, from Michael Murphy in County Fermanagh,
"What has been your greatest achievement
"over the last 50 years of The Sky At Night and your career?"
I've tried to do one thing, to interest other people in astronomy,
show them what a marvellous study it is,
bring them into it as a hobby,
possibly as a profession, and give them something interesting to enrich their lives.
That's what I've tried to do.
Whether I've managed it, that's for others to decide, but I've done my best. Absolutely.
Astronomy, the greatest of all the sciences, and anyone can try it.
Well, Patrick, thank you very much. Perhaps in 30 years' time,
we'll be doing this programme again, only this time I'll be you.
I do hope so, that would make me very happy indeed.
I shall return to the 25th anniversary.
I wish you all the very best, not only for the 700th episode
but also for your 55th anniversary next year, in 2012.
Thank you very much indeed.
Many congratulations and, as always, it's terribly nice to meet me.
Nice to see you, Patrick. And you, Patrick, as well.
Until next time, God bless, goodnight.
Patrick, thank you very much. No, thank you, Patrick.
Yes, well, I've enjoyed talking to myself.
Yes, our other selves.
I wonder.
The first Sky At Night was broadcast in 1957,
just before the launch of the first satellite, Sputnik.
Since then, we've sent telescopes into space
and landed robots on other worlds.
Professor David Southwood leads Europe's missions
to the planets and beyond.
Jon, can we have the first question?
We can indeed, Patrick, and it's from Ashley Bradshaw from Preston.
"What's in store for this century of space travel and exploration?"
Oh, everyone's going to have different ideas here,
but I think you must start, David.
We are going to explore Mars.
We've got now a new programme of exploration
we've agreed with the Americans.
I guess I would really like to see human beings going further
than the International Space Station.
I would like to see the adventure pick up
from where we, at present, seem stalled.
Chris, what about you?
I think we're going to find Earth-like planets.
We may have the first ones already And several of those may be within a few hundred light years,
and I think if it takes 1,000 years to launch a simple probe there,
I think we should launch that probe and then wait.
I'd like to see humanity send our first probes out towards the stars.
Anything to add to that?
I would like to see a manned mission to Mars, for many, many reasons.
One is that it's probably the most likely place that
we may find microbial life, other than Europa, perhaps,
and probably easier to send a manned mission to Mars than to drill through the surface of Europa!
But also, if you look at Apollo, I genuinely think Apollo
was the greatest human achievement in many ways.
I know that people will say it wasn't worth the money, but I've read
reports that have said that for every dollar invested in Apollo,
14 came back into the US economy.
It's obvious to me that's true, because the inspirational value of Apollo was immeasurable,
So I think that you measure manned space flight by different...
You don't really measure it in scientific terms, you measure it in inspirational terms.
Emotional terms.
Is it true, do you think, once we are
much more established on Mars
we should start terra-forming it and try to melt the polar caps and make it
more Earth-like, or is the Martian surface a very precious thing? Should we leave it as it is?
I find this a very difficult question,
because I come from Devonshire.
People went from Devonshire all over the globe.
I'm afraid they Devon-formed...
As long as we don't do that to Mars!
THEY LAUGH
You're outnumbered!
Anyhow, what I would say is
I want to keep things as pristine as I can
until we've done the fundamental science.
I will buy that completely.
But I should accept the fact we humans are part of the universe,
and we interact with it, it's a two-way process.
The universe is changing us, we will change it.
We can't avoid it.
Well, if I might give my own ideas,
I would like to see a probe to Mars, via Deimos,
but I also want to see a proper lunar base.
We'd learn so much from it, and it would have to be international.
I hope it'll happen.
Ask again in 50 years and I'll tell you.
David, thank you very much.
Our next guest is the Astronomer Royal, who's joining us
to answer your questions about the universe.
But first, Professor Martin Rees has a cup of tea and talks telescopes.
Where is that?
Probably near to Paranal in Chile,
very close to where the VLT is.
All right, everybody happy? We're recording.
OK, Patrick.
Well, over the years of The Sky At Night,
we've touched on dark matter and similar topics quite often.
When we called in for our questions,
over 1,000 came in for this programme,
the most popular by far was cosmology.
Can we have our first question, please?
Here it is, from Alex Andrews of Oxford.
"Where exactly is the centre of the universe,
"and where is our solar system and galaxy in relation to it?"
There's no place in our universe which is
more central than any other place.
This is, I guess, what's called the Copernican principle,
which does seem to be obeyed by our universe.
Every part seems to have had the same history as every other part.
Am I wrong here, Martin?
When I'm asked that question, I say the Big Bang happened everywhere.
Well, indeed, it was one point,
but that point has now had its aftermath everywhere,
so we can't localise it at all.
We're not in a central position.
One of the most counter-intuitive things is I think
cosmologists say to me, is that if the universe is infinite now,
which it may well be, probably is, then it was infinite then,
it was born infinite, wasn't it, in that sense? But with everything in one place.
All the space that's here now was there then.
In effect, because we don't quite know
whether the universe is infinite or just huge but finite.
But it could still have been infinite, even if it was really tiny.
Well, I maintain, I may be wrong here, but we're stuck either way.
Either the universe is finite, or else it isn't.
If it's finite, what's outside it?
Say nothing, that's big enough a question.
If it's infinite, you operate in something that goes on forever,
and I personally can't do that!
I love it when astronomy gets so exhaustingly confusing like that!
Question two.
"What is our universe expanding into?"
Ah, yes.
Well, here again the issue is, is our universe infinite or not?
If it's finite, then it must sort of close up on itself,
so an analogy people use is the surface of a sphere, like that,
where if you go on the sphere, you just go round and round,
you don't get to an edge,
and similarly, one-dimension up, many people think that the universe
could be finite but have no edge, so it would then be finite,
it would expand, just as you could imagine that whole sphere being expanded.
An added complication is one of the things
we're looking for at CERN on the speculative end,
is extra dimensions in the universe.
There are real theories that predict or suggest there may be extra dimensions,
and that would mean that what we call our universe now could be a sheet,
a four dimensional sheet, floating around in a higher dimensional box.
Well, that's right. The dimensions in string theory are normally
thought to be very tightly wound up, so they only affect a small scale.
That may not be true,
they may be detectable on the scales measured at Cern,
but then, as you say, there's the idea
that perhaps our universe is alongside another.
You can imagine this table and a parallel table up here,
and ants crawling around on this table would think
they were a two-dimensional universe,
they wouldn't be aware of another population.
And likewise, one dimension up,
there could be another universe just that far away from ours,
and if that distance is measured in some fourth spatial dimension,
and we're imprisoned in our three, we wouldn't know about it.
The one nice thing about that, it's still speculation,
but this is a potential explanation for why gravity is weak
compared to the other forces, which is something we'd like to try and understand.
But if you allow gravity to leak off your universe and exist in these other dimensions,
then you've explained why, to us, gravity appears weaker than the others.
It's going into very deep water! I think we'll move on!
It could be very shallow water, but in an extra dimension!
It's much more fun when we don't have the evidence, Patrick! We can speculate.
The next one, from Peter Burgess of Gloucester,
"how does gravity bend light if photons have no mass?"
Well, photons have energy, not mass,
but I think that's a kind of question that Newton would have worried about
when he thought of gravity as the standard inverse-square law, et cetera.
My own definition of gravity is quite simple.
Gravity is the force that gives mass weight. Yes!
I think it's the most incredible thing,
the ultimate example of Einstein's theory is that
if I take this glass now and drop it,
everything falls at the same rate in a gravitational field.
If I take a laser and fired it in that direction, if there was enough ground,
it'd hit the ground at the same time as the glass,
because light falls at the same rate in a gravitational field as everything else.
The point is, though, that it goes 186,000 miles a second -
if this took a second to hit the ground, it'd miss the Earth.
But if the Earth were big enough, it'd hit the ground at the same time -
it travels through the same curve space.
And the fact that it falls at the same speed is a natural consequence of Einstein's theory,
whereas to Newton, it was not obvious.
Fascinating. Right, Jon. Phew!
How are you doing, Jon?! Are you OK?! It's fascinating.
This must be in Tom Baker's voice now!
AS TOM BAKER: Ah, yes, very well.
Simon Hewitt of London, thank you for your perspicacity in asking this question.
"Will black holes eventually swallow up everything?"
Hmm. Well, Martin, will they? Um, we don't think so.
They'll gradually swallow up the material around them,
but most material won't fall in, for two reasons - either it's expanding
away from them with the rest of the universe,
or it's orbiting around them.
And it won't be able readily to lose all its angle of momentum.
So it's pretty unlikely that everything will
fall into a black hole, but certainly more will.
But then, of course, black holes don't live forever.
According to an idea that Stephen Hawking worked out,
black holes themselves gradually evaporate away.
So in the very, very far future,
there wouldn't even be any black holes.
We won't be here, there won't be any Sky At Night!
It might be a clean slate for another Big Bang to start everything up again.
Any more questions?
One that's just occurred to me, this notion that if you travel fast enough,
beyond the speed of light, you will travel forward in time.
You can't go faster than the speed of light.
You can't get there, cos the closer you get,
the harder it is to accelerate.
If you're massless, you might. You can't go faster.
If you reach the speed of light, your time stands still
and your mass becomes infinite.
I haven't got that far - my mass is not infinite yet! Not quite!
Jolly nearly, but not quite!
So, the speed of light, 186,000 miles a second? Yeah.
It's the law, it's not just a good idea. That's the limit. What is to stop us
when the technology is there to travel 186,001 miles per second?
It's not as bad you might think, because although nothing can move faster than that,
as seen by some observer at rest,
because clocks run slow and ageing occurs more slowly when you move fast,
it is possible to get as far as you like in what's quite a short time
as measured by your subjective clock
if you move close enough to the speed of light.
So it's possible if you go close to the speed of light, to get to the Andromeda Galaxy and come back
in what to you would seem like quite a short time. But when you came back,
at least two million years would have passed here on Earth.
The most wonderful example of that is for light itself,
so the distance of light itself between us
and the Andromeda Galaxy, the time difference, is zero.
The distance is zero. Everywhere. Well... Yes, quite so!
We're rather stunned!
What about you, Jon? Are you stunned at your question?
Completely, and wonderfully.
Any more questions for us?
Lightsabers, as seen in Star Wars.
Lightsabers!
Lightsabers, as seen in Star Wars.
That's an engineering problem, Jon. You're asking the wrong people.
That was a marvellous discussion, and I hope everyone in the studio
is now absolutely clear as to what it's all about.
Martin, thank you so much. Been a great honour to have you with us.
For our last section, we've been joined by Dr Brian May.
He started out as an astronomer before being lured away
by the bright lights of rock music.
Good to see you. How are you?
As the Astronomer Royal left, he made an intriguing observation.
I don't know any scientist who looks as much like Isaac Newton as you do.
THEY LAUGH
I enjoy that. That will be my after dinner commentary.
Thank you very much. Lovely to see you.
Brian is going to help us answer some of the more general questions.
We're recording.
Let's begin with the questions. Let's have the first one, Jon.
It comes from Adrian Barnard from Didcot.
"What inspired the panel to take up a astronomy with such a passion?"
This is a very easy question, and I, in common with
thousands and thousands of people in Britain,
my inspiration was you, Patrick, of course.
A little book which was in my school library called The Earth,
and I borrowed it, and I think I almost never gave it back.
I just read it from cover to cover over and over
and discovered about the formation of the Earth, trilobites, and the emergence of life,
and I was hooked forever. I used to beg to be allowed to stay up and watch The Sky At Night.
I had forgotten that. That's the book I wrote years and years ago, wasn't it?
It's a wonderful book.
Right, on to you.
Well, it will be no great surprise, Patrick,
that it was you again, but not a book this time.
I sat in my first term at Torquay Boys' Grammar School
in the audience for a public lecture you gave
on the outer planets, and you talked for an hour,
and I don't remember the hour, but what I remember is what you said right at the end.
You came straight to the front of the stage,
you said, "I've told you what we know about the outer planets. The truth is we don't know much,
"and by the time any of you grow up, then we'll need to have found out a lot more".
It was the first time I'd heard an adult say, "We don't know everything yet",
and I thought, "I want to do that", so it's entirely your fault.
I still don't know much about the outer planets, though.
Nor do I. And you came up after and began to talking to me.
I thought, "They better keep an eye on this boy!"
Very kind of you to say so. Right, coming to you.
Well, again, at the risk at the risk of being repetitive,
it was a book that you wrote. But I've got it here.
So I brought it with me and it's this one.
It's The Observer's Book Of Astronomy by Patrick Moore,
and I know when it was, because I got it as a school prize
in 1978, so I chose it. What was the prize for?
Unfortunately for me, when I remembered this,
I thought it must be physics or science.
It's for 100% attendance. So it's not distinguished in that sense.
But yeah, this book.
From the same series as The Earth.
And I also asked for the book, that I had, as a school prize.
Strangely enough. I've worn out copy that they got from the school library. Fantastic.
Jon, what about you?
Well, Patrick, once again, it was you, and I remember
being off school one afternoon with measles or something
and I watched a repeat of The Sky At Night one afternoon, on BBC2. And there you were.
I've never seen any presenter
speak this way and I was fascinated. So I was inspired into astronomy,
and impressions as well, and that's because of you.
Well, in my case it was picking up a book, The Story Of The Solar System,
by G F Chambers, published in 1898. I read it when I was seven in 1930.
Right, next question, Jon.
Chris Sidwell-Smith of Leicester asks,
"The Sky At Night encouraged me to go to university
"and study space science. What is required now..."
30 years on for this questioner, "..to encourage the next generation
"to have an interest in astronomy as both a hobby and an academic subject?"
Right, Brian.
I'm feeling rather nervous, because the seat is still warm from the Astronomer Royal,
so I'm feeling a little unworthy sitting here,
but encouraging the line to be blurred
between amateurs and professionals is very important.
Of course we can all sit
with an incredible amount of computing power on our desktops now,
more than was used even to send a man to the moon,
and so amateurs are able to make a fantastic contribution to science
and should be encouraged to do so.
It's the one science where amateurs and professionals can work together and amateur work is really valued.
You can have the most powerful telescope
in the world, but it can only be pointing in one place.
And everywhere else, things are happening the whole time, which is great.
I was just going to say, I think, to encourage people to
become fascinated with astronomy is watch for a solar eclipse. Try and see a solar eclipse.
We should have more. More solar eclipses. Can you arrange that? We'll work on it.
Let's go on to the next question, shall we, Jon?
This is a futuristic one from Geraint Day in Swindon.
"What do you think will be the most likely topic for the 1000th edition of The Sky At Night?"
It will be Patrick saying, "I don't think I can do this much longer!" Like he was saying 20 years ago.
Well, I won't be here, but, uh...
I think we'll be talking about how we don't understand the expansion of the universe.
I don't think we'll understand why the universe is speeding up.
It'll still be a huge question.
I think we'll be looking back at the discovery of the nature of dark matter
from the Large Hadron Collider within the next couple of years.
Maybe a broadcast from a lunar base?
Yeah, that would be nice.
Yes, I'd like that. That is possible.
Come now to the next question. What is it, Jon?
This one comes from Mark Ike of Birchington in Kent.
"After all the previous shows, can you pick a highlight, or is there an episode,
"Sir Patrick, that sticks in your mind as a real wow factor?"
Shall I begin this one? This one's for you.
The first photos back from the other side of the moon.
The Russians said they'd send them as soon as they got them from the probe, Luna-3.
It was for going around the moon.
They had used my charts, and they promised to send me the photographs,
and they did,
and it was actually on the air live when they came through.
So that was a great moment. What about you?
I think it would have to be the first moon landing.
I was down in Cornwall with my drummer, Roger, in his mum's house, and we just sat there
watching a TV screen about this big, and there you were, and it was all very unreal,
and I think about it a lot. It seemed the most unlikely and sort of modern thing
that could possibly happen. It's a long time ago now, isn't it? It is indeed!
That's an unforgettable moment. I think it's one of these things, everybody knows where they were
when it was one small step for mankind, or one giant step for mankind, or whatever it was.
I think he was slightly confused as well, wasn't he?
But, um... wonderful. I'll never forget that time.
We were seeing things actually as they happened, or rather seconds later.
What about you? The night Huygens, the probe, landed on Titan. I was at Mission Control,
and because we'd got to know the scientists, we'd had them on Sky At Night,
we just stood in the corridor and grabbed people as they came past
as this story unfolded, a probe that they'd built, landing on Titan
and sending back the first images from this wonderful world.
As yet, we've still got no scientific data from Huygens...
And there... There it is!
We've seen the impact of the probe with the surface directly from two sensors.
That's not my favourite bit. That didn't get on camera.
Just outside, there were a bunch of amateur astronomers with telescopes
pointing at Saturn, and there was this line of scientists and engineers
who'd built the thing that had landed on Titan but have never seen Titan,
and they were going up on by one and just looking, and I thought that summed up The Sky At Night,
the professional and the amateur telescopes. Having both at once was a wonderful moment.
I did have a letter once
from an esteemed astronomer whom I won't name
who'd made an important discovery of a nova.
He's made a completely independent discovery of Saturn.
LAUGHTER
What about you, Brian?
The first Sky At Night. So as far as I'm concerned, this one is my favourite.
Yes, Jon.
Well, I do rather love those moments where things perhaps don't go to plan
and that brings out your wonderful sense of humour.
I can't see a single star at the moment.
It's totally obscured.
I remember phrases like, "Oh, dear, we're completely clouded out.
It's coming out. Yes, there is the moon. I can see it for the moment.
No, it's gone again. It's gone.
Absolutely infuriating. There's nothing one can do.
"Well, never mind. These things happen. We can't control it".
No telescope yet built will show us... Is it gone? Oh, no.
Just as I got it on the cross wires it blacked right out.
Typical. There's nothing we can do about it.
I can't move a 24-inch telescope quicker than that.
No, I'm afraid you can't.
And you've got a wonderful sort of stoicism when things don't go to plan.
That's The Sky A Night. I think that's a wonderful quality of yours that I always admire.
Well, I feel very honoured.
So, I hope you've enjoyed our 700th Sky At Night,
an anniversary, and quite a record, I think.
Your questions have been both challenging an illuminating.
With over 1,000, we've barely been able to scratch the surface.
But go to:
..and you'll find answers to a few more of your astronomical queries.
Well, the end of one era. And now, next month I come back,
and we have the first programme of our next 700.
Until then, goodnight!
Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd
Email: subtitling@bbc.co.uk