August 2021 BBC Sky at Night Magazine 19Keaton Stone
is a producer
and director of
The Sky at Night
THE SKY AT NIGHT WANTS YOUR QUESTIONS
As part of the British Science Festival 2021, The Sky at Night is recording
a special programme on 8 September, when the presenters and special
guests will be answering questions from viewers. If you have a question – on
anything from space travel and technology to astronomy and astrophysics- you can email it to the programme team at: [email protected]
moments from our big brother Horizon, as well as
Whicker’s World, plus some marvellous shows before
my time that I never even realised existed!
Controversially perhaps, I’m not going to say too
much about the show itself, as I don’t want to give too
much away and besides, I imagine the title ‘ET and the
BBC’ is enough to reel in readers of this magazine! But
a few highlights for me involve Patrick being accused
of sheer arrogance for not entertaining the prospect of
human life on Venus, Carl Sagan explaining why aliens
might want to get frisky with our plantlife and Arthur
C Clarke predicting advanced intelligent life in the
cosmos would most likely be cousins of our computers.And how could I not mention the nifty wager with
Brian May that later sees Patrick pop-up to claim
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future cyberspace!
In a programme like this, which lives or dies by the
material sourced and how completely disparate
moments over different decades are strung together
to tell a compelling story, I’d like to bring your
attention to the efforts of archive producer Martin
West and editor Saul Budd. Such roles are often
overlooked in the programmes we make, so I hope
you’ll join me in acknowledging their brilliant
handiwork when you watch the episode.INSIDE THE SKY AT NIGHT
Looking back:
The Sky at Night
31 August 1991
On 31 August
1991 episode
of The Sky at
Night, Patrick
Moore took
a look at one
of the most
famous stars
in the night
sky – Polaris.
Also known
as the Pole
Star, or North
Star, Polaris’s
position
directly over the North Pole means it
appears to stay static through the
night, a quality that navigators and
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their way around the night sky for
hundreds of years. Conveniently, it is
the 46th brightest star in the night sky,
meaning it is easy to spot.
Polaris is in fact a triple system, made
up of two stars about the mass of the
6XQƆDQNLQJDODUJHUƅYHVRODUPDVVstar. The
North Star
is located
around 440
lightyears
away,
meaning the
light we see
from it left
it centuries
ago, when
the Crusades
were
occurring
here on Earth.
Despite its current importance,
Polaris hasn’t always been directly over
the Pole, nor will it remain there forever.
The Earth’s axis precesses, meaning it
wobbles like a spinning top, tracing out
circles on the night sky and causing the
Pole to drift away from Polaris. In 3,
AD, the North Star will be Gamma (a)
Cephei in Cepheus. By 10,000 AD it will
be Deneb (Alpha (_) Cygni), before
drifting back to Polaris in 27,800 AD.Þ Due to its brightness, Polaris is easy to spot, even
in light-polluted skiesExploring Jupiter
This month there are two anniversaries
for the price of one! The National Space
Centre in Leicester is 20 years old and
NASA’s Juno space probe is 10. Recorded
at the National Space Centre, The Sky at
Night looks at the achievements of the
Jupiter explorer. Chris and Maggie speak
to Juno’s Principal Investigator Scott
Bolton and members of the UK Juno team,
Jonathan Nichols and Leigh Fletcher.Four, 8 August, 10pm (first repeat
Four, 12 August, 7:30pm)
Check http://www.bbc.co.uk/skyatnight
for more up-to-date informationAUGUST
Þ Juno has enabled scientists to look
at Jupiter’s atmosphere in great detail