Sky at night summery guide

PATRICK MOORE 1964

A PROGRAM SUMMERY TO THE SKY AT NIGHT BEGINNING WITH VOLUME 1 OF SIR PATRICK MOORE'S 15 VOLUMES. IT IS GIVEN AS A SOURCE OF HISTORIC REFERENCE MATERIAL FOR HISTORIANS. RICHARD PEARSON

Foreword

BY PAUL JOHNSTONE Sometime in the early fifties, I picked up a battered book, which had been left behind by someone in the flat where I was living. It was called Suns, Myths and Men. As an historian, I had little knowledge of astronomy, but I had not been reading the book for more than a few minutes when I felt sure that here was an ideal subject for television. The subject was extremely interesting in itself, all sorts of exciting developments were going on, it was particularly suitable for visual illustration on television, and in the widest possible sense it involved the whole framework in which man lived his life.

It took me some time and effort to persuade the BBC programme chiefs to agree about this. The resultant programmes had some good television in them. Unfortunately the chief performer, though a distinguished astronomer and an experienced lecturer, was not at home in front of a television camera.

It has always seemed to me that television is above all a means of communication to a mass audience. That does not mean it should debase subjects or avoid difficult or so-called minority ones. However, it is not like a book, where you can re-read a difficult sentence. Nor can it ever replace books as permanent sources of wisdom or knowledge. On the other hand, the combination of immediacy, personality and illustration can impart information more vividly to a wide audience than any book or magazine, provided always that this essential clarity and simplicity is kept.

I knew enough after that first series to want to try again. Having built a working model of scaffolding and elastic to illustrate the expanding universe theory, I had confirmed the visual possibilities of the subject. I had also learnt the hard way that it needed a very particular type of person in front of the camera.

That problem was solved by a happy coincidence. I was doing a programme on Flying Saucers with Desmond Leslie. We needed an astronomer who did not believe in them to argue the case. I was not too happy when Desmond suggested someone, because that did not seem the ideal way to line up a good argument. However, Desmond had already been in touch with Adamski, the man who claimed to have been aboard a Flying Saucer from Venus and now promised to arrange for one to appear during the transmission over the camera we had put up on the roof of Lime Grove studios to observe it, and such enthusiasm for the programme seemed to deserve a less suspicious reaction on my part. So I agreed to meet the astronomer he suggested. It was Patrick Moore, author of the battered book Suns, Myths and Men. From the moment I saw his subsequent performance, The Sky at Night became more or less inevitable.

I found that Patrick also shared with me another important feeling about astronomy. Every television producer has somewhere a hidden sense of guilt that however good and amusing and interesting his programmes are, he is still involved in a one-sided activity. The more people watch, the more people he has stopped doing something other than just passively watching. And surely, passive non-active non-creative leisure is one of the great failings of modern society.

Over the years, I have tried to ease my conscience by doing programmes, which, while acceptable and enjoyable as ordinary programmes, would also, one hoped, as a side effect encourage people to go and do things afterwards. With archaeology, to go and look at Stonehenge or go on a dig.

With astronomy, to get a telescope or just look at the sky observantly. Patrick entirely agreed, and this go-and-look element has always been an essential part of The Sky at Night.

Of course, we had a lot to learn. I remember very sharply the nervousness with which, after the first programme, I went to our Departmental Meeting, the weekly occasion when one is subjected to the uninhibited and knowledgeable criticisms of one's colleagues. One particularly distinguished and articulate producer, now incidentally one of Patrick’s warmest admirers, launched a tremendous attack on the programme, the conception, the handling, the speaker, everything about it. ‘This is just the sort of thing we should not do,’ he ended. I won the exchange, quite involuntarily, because all I could think of in reply to this tirade, which seemed to have gone on for minutes, was ‘I don’t agree’, and the meeting collapsed into laughter!

We were fortunate in the people who helped to give The Sky at Night its particular character. We asked John Carter, the gramophone librarian of BBC Television who has contributed to so many productions by his imaginative suggestions of music, to look out for a good recognizable tune, which had a feeling of ‘the music of the spheres’ about it. He came up with a marvellous choice, from Sibelius’ Pelleas et Melisande suite, called ‘At the Castle Gate’, a piece of music which one person told me gave him the feeling of the wind of space rushing past every time he heard it. Only recently, it was called the best of all television signature tunes, and such has been the demand that a special recording of it has been put on sale by one of the big gramophone companies.

Nancy Thomas, subsequently of Monitor and one of the most skilled directors in the Talks field, was responsible for choosing the set, an enlargement of a planisphere, or map of the heavens, which still remains after seven years one of the most satisfactory single sets in television.

Then there was that mysterious establishment down the Gold-hawk Road where Till, a black Alsatian the size of a pony, presided over several cellars full of assorted pieces of cardboard, and Alfred Wurmser, a charming ex-Viennese polymath, with the help of Skat, an invaluable Dane, produced the elaborate and edifying animated diagrams which have so important a part in making our programme subjects understandable.

Also over the years we have developed a very satisfactory association with Paddy Cullen and David Hardy, who at the briefest telephone call turn out explanatory drawings and imaginary astronomical scenes, some of which you can see in this book.

One must also mention the dancing girls. We claim happily to be the only serious scientific programme on television, which regularly employs chorus girls. In particular, one former Silhouette has become a very experienced Sky at Night performer. We dress them in black and put them against black backgrounds, holding white models. With a twiddle of the electronic knobs, unhappily say some, the girls vanish from the screen, leaving only the models visible, over which one then has complete control of movement in three dimensions in a manner impossible for any mechanical device, and much more graceful.

But of course, the things that were of most help of all to us were the events themselves. When we started The Sky at Night, ‘space-satellite’ was a private word of a few backroom experts. Who would have guessed when we launched the programme that before long we would be doing scripts about Sputniks, showing pictures of the back of the Moon, analyzing close-up signals from the surface of Venus, and wondering whether the next landing on the Moon would be soft or hard?

One difficulty we never had was lack of subject matter. We put spectroscopes on a television camera, or a microscope to show viewers how bacteria were standing up to conditions they might experience on Mars. We demonstrated revolving binary systems by means of models, and created lunar sunrises and sunsets over models of craters. We set cameras circling on turntables while they looked at a fixed light, to demonstrate the apparent motions of stars, and we had the co-operation

of hundreds of viewers in finding out how many of the Pleiades can be seen with the naked eye. We had telephone calls into the studio from Moscow and the USA reporting on latest developments, and we fed in signals from Jodrell Bank.

We even survived when Patrick, demonstrating the temperature of lunar night by hammering an egg, which had been dipped in liquid air, mistimed the dipping, so that the egg exploded under the hammer-blow and scattered debris all over the studio. He also, in one programme, swallowed a large fly. It flew into his mouth, and, as he said afterwards, he really had no choice. If you look at the right moment of the tape-recording, you can just see a momentary gleam of horror in his eye, followed by a faint gulp.

Above all, we persevered with the direct televising of the night sky itself. The Moon had been put on the screen in the early days from a window in Alexandra Palace. By putting a lightweight vidicon camera on to George Hole’s great 24-inch telescope in his garden at Patcham, we progressed to really big close-ups of the lunar surface, and then on to the first direct televising of Venus and Saturn. Of course, this sort of activity has its difficulties. Some people may remember the fiftieth Sky at Night, which we did live from George Hole’s garden, linked to other cameras attached to a big telescope at the Royal Observatory, Edinburgh. Though the weather was clear both before the programme and immediately afterwards, with magnificent pictures coming in through the telescope, during the transmission itself we were totally clouded out. It is a tribute to Patrick and George as performers that this was still a very popular and enjoyable episode!

By contrast, we were extremely lucky with the total eclipse of the Sun in 1961. We had put forward the suggestion that we should use the Eurovision link to switch to three lots of television cameras ahead of totality as the Moon’s shadow raced across Europe at hundreds of miles an hour, to enable people to do what no one had ever done before in the history of the world: see the same eclipse three times over. The idea was accepted by the Eurovision planning committee, and The Sky at Night team was put in charge of a television operation, which stretched from Selsey Bill via France and Italy to Jugoslavia, and was seen throughout Europe and the British Isles. Though totality was due shortly after 8 am on a February morning, we had the amazing luck of clear skies right the way down the track. Even Patrick, doing one of his most brilliant broadcasts ever from the top of a Jugoslav mountain deep in snow, had the satisfaction of seeing the clouds clear away just in time to reveal a glorious diamond-ring effect as totality ended.

But perhaps even more thrilling, from a purely technical point of view, was the time when we brought the moons of Jupiter on to the television screen. Those four little blobs moving in their straight line across the screen, only a few thousands of miles in diameter, over three hundred and fifty million miles away, we claim to represent easily the longest-distance television broadcast ever, making the range of Eurovision or Telstar seem puny by comparison.

We also had one amazing and quite unforeseen piece of luck. The first pictures of the back of the Moon, never before seen by human eye, were something that we, above all other television programmes, were obsessively interested in. By some incredible and fantastic coincidence, the Russians decided to release those taken by Lunik III on an evening when The Sky at Night was on the air, and a little over an hour before we started. As soon as we heard that they were coming down the wire from Moscow to the Associated Press office in Fleet Street, we had a car and an assistant waiting there. All day we had been fretting over the probable timetable of release, and now the tension started to get really fierce. By the time the programme started, there was still no sign of them. I had kept a camera lined up on the door into the studio, and with six minutes to go, there, suddenly on the screen was my assistant triumphantly waving the historic photograph,

hardly dry yet, above his head. So we were the first to show the back of the Moon to people in this country, before the News, ITN, the papers, anyone. As there is a BBC News every three hours every evening of the year, and we went on the air for a quarter of an hour once every four weeks, the odds against this happening, and our excitement, can be appreciated!

We have been lucky too in the people who have appeared with Patrick on the programme. Colin Ronan, Henry Brinton, Frank Hyde, Hugh Butler and Howard Miles are some of the faithful supporters and excellent performers whom we have always been able to rely on. We have had, too, the pleasure and honour of welcoming to the programme such distinguished astronomers as the late Sir Harold Spencer Jones, former Astronomer Royal; Professor Sir Bernard Lovell; Professor Alla Masevich, Vice- President of the USSR Academy of Sciences; and Dr Harlow Shapley, Director Emeritus of the Harvard College Observatory and perhaps the greatest of living astronomers.

Above all there has been Patrick himself. As a performer, his chief virtues are great clarity of exposition, an extremely quick and encyclopaedic mind, no nerves whatever, and quite extraordinary enthusiasm. He also appears to have that very valuable device, from the point of view of a television producer - a clock built into his head!

He has his faults too. His worst is his insatiable urge to get going during a rehearsal. Even in the best organized and longest running programmes, there are bound to be pauses during the first runthrough. But dare to stop Patrick! At once, the studio is shaken by such fearful groans that one would think he had been attacked by some sudden violent galactic lumbago.

The quality I admire most in him has perhaps no direct relation to television. It is his complete disinterest in himself. One has seen, alas, other television stars on whom the transient fame of the screen has not had too happy an effect. Not so with Patrick. Material reward, publicity, recognition concern him not at all. When the Edinburgh Astronomical Society awarded him the Lorimer Gold Medal, which has been awarded only four times and whose holders included Sir James Jeans and Sir Arthur Eddington, he refused point-blank to allow this to be mentioned before the subsequent programme. He is quite unaware that he is, in the words of our Director of Television, the best television performer who has never won a television award. I could write more about his wartime RAF service and his work for Scouts and for handicapped children, but I have already risked an association I value very highly by saying so much.

The chapters that follow are not designed specifically to illumine the main lines of astronomy. This has been done by other books, including Patrick’s. The great advantage of a long-running topical programme such as The Sky at Night is its ability to range all over the place, digging out odd controversies, forgotten pieces of astronomical history, and small but significant side issues, as well as the great cosmological arguments. Even if the pages of this book lack that wagging eyebrow to ram home their conclusions, I am sure they will reflect the quality Patrick Moore has made familiar to very many viewers over the years in The Sky at Night.

PAUL JOHNSTONE -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------The Shape of Our Galaxy 4 May 1959 The question of the shape of our star-system, or Galaxy, is obviously of particular importance in astronomy. The first man to give accurate figures for the size of the galactic system was Dr Harlow

Shapley, whose results were published over forty years ago. Since that time, Dr Shapley has continued his astronomical work, and has been responsible for various fundamental advances. In the spring of 1959, he visited Britain, and I considered it a great honour when he joined me for the May Sky at Night programme. Dr Shapley is now Director Emeritus of the Harvard College Observatory.

The Hidden Face of the Moon 26 October 1959 Ever since astronomy began, there has been curiosity about ‘the other side of the Moon1 — that part of the lunar surface which we cannot see from Earth, since it is always turned away from us. At last, in October 1959, the Russians dispatched Lunik III, which passed beyond the Moon and sent back photographs of the averted side. This, remember, was only two years after the ascent of the first artificial satellite. Sputnik I was launched on 4 October 1957; Lunik III on 4 October 1959.

The photographs became available on 26 October. I had actually started the television programme when the first copies arrived, rushed down from London at a speed which would not have pleased the police (at that time traffic wardens lay, mercifully, in the future). Colin Ronan was in the studio with me, and we were able to show the pictures immediately, so giving people in Britain a first view of them. By good luck I was able to identify the grey plain known as the Mare Crisium, which was clearly recognizable, and so give what I hope was an intelligible commentary.

The article for The Listener was written that night, and is printed here as published three days later.

Actually, the conclusions have been borne out by subsequent investigations. The hidden area is indeed crowded with craters, which do not show up well because they were photographed under the equivalent of full-moon lighting; ‘seas’ are fewer than on the visible face; Wilkins’ estimates of the positions of ray-craters were not very wide of the mark. As for Lunik III itself, signals from it ceased abruptly some time later, and contact was never regained, so that its final fate will never be known.

What Was the Star of Bethlehem?

22 December 1959 All that need be said about this particular broadcast is that it led to a deluge of correspondence!

The subject is certainly controversial, but there is little more I can add to it, and we are again faced with a problem which is hardly likely to be solved.

The Message of Starlight 27 October 1960 No telescope will show a star as anything but a point of light, and if we are to find out what the stars are really like it is necessary to use instruments based upon the principle of the spectroscope.

Many people had written to ask me about this, and the programme of October ig6o was the result.

Astronomical Progress in the USSR 17 November 1960 By i960 everyone in Western Europe was well aware of the Soviet achievements in space research; at that time the Russians were far ahead of the Americans in rocket techniques, though from all indications the gap has narrowed since (even if it still exists at all). What was not so generally known was that in the field of astronomy, too, the Russians were very much to the fore. When I was invited to visit the USSR, I had the opportunity to see for myself, and on my return, I broadcast my impressions.

Tektites 22 December 1960 Tektites are certainly among the most mysterious objects known to science, and it has been suggested that they come from the Moon. Proof of this fascinating speculation is lacking, but it is now widely considered that whatever they may be, tektites are extra-terrestrial. In discussing them during the programme of December 5, I was accompanied by Dr M. H. Hey, a Senior Principal Scientific Officer of the Department of Mineralogy at the British Museum (Natural History). At the present time — 1964 — the tektite mystery remains as deep as ever.

The Evolution of the Universe 9 March 1961 Few problems are more important or more fascinating than that of the origin of the universe.

Formerly it was supposed that the universe began at a definite moment and is now evolving towards its death, but different views are held by H. Bondi, T. Gold, F. Hoyle and their colleagues, who believe that the universe is in a ‘steady state’; that it had no beginning, and will never end.

The controversy between these rival theories reached a new crescendo in February 1961, when, at a meeting of the Royal Astronomical Society, Professor Martin Ryle, of Cambridge, presented a paper in which the evolutionary hypothesis was supported; new results were given, and reports in the Press on the following day suggested that the steady-state idea had been definitely disproved.

This is not the case, and since then there have been counter-arguments; the whole question is still very open.

During the programme I was accompanied by Professor W. H. McCrea, of the Royal Holloway College, London University, formerly and President of the Royal Astronomical Society.

The Amateur Radio Astronomer 10 July 1961 Amateur astronomers are common; many of them carry out very useful work. Amateur radio astronomers are much fewer, mainly because the equipment needed is too complex for the nonspecialist. Yet, as always, it is the exception that proves the rule - and in this case the 'exception’ is F. W. Hyde, who has established a full-scale radio astronomy observatory at St Osyth, near Clacton.

For the 1961 June programme we decided upon an ‘outside broadcast’ with a mobile television unit, and the programme was actually carried out from the Hyde Observatory at St Osyth.

Astronomy on Television 7 September 1961 For the fiftieth programme in The Sky at Night series, we attempted a rather ambitious outside broadcast from Patcham, near Brighton, where G. A. Hole, world-famous as an optical expert, has set up a 24-inch reflector. Preparations took some time, and various new devices had to be made, many of which were planned and constructed by George Hole himself. We hoped to show some spectacular objects, including the planets Jupiter and Saturn.

Well before the time when we were due to start, massive vans full of equipment started arriving at Patcham, and the whole area was a hive of activity. The weather was tactically uncertain, but we hoped for the best. Perhaps we were over-optimistic; after all, we had been successful on previous occasions - but this time we met our Waterloo, and the clouds seemed to take a fiendish delight in checkmating us. Each time we swung the telescope toward a star or planet, the object disappeared behind a cloudy veil. We attributed it to the well-known Spade’s Law, which states, broadly, that ‘if things can go wrong, they do’. Nevertheless, we learned several useful things from the fiftieth Sky at Night, and the knowledge gained was put to good use on subsequent occasions.

Has the Earth Three Moons?

9 November 1961 The idea that the Earth may have a minor satellite is not new, but the matter was reopened in 1961 when the Polish astronomer K. Kordylewski announced that he had detected two nebulous objects, which might be in the nature of meteoric debris moving in the same path as the Moon. When the broadcast of October 1961 was made, Kordylewski’s results were unconfirmed; three years later, they were still unconfirmed, and so far, there is nothing to be added to what I originally said during the programme.

Some theoretical investigations were made by Colin Ronan, Director of the Historical Section of the British Astronomical Association, who appeared with me.

Open Star-Clusters 7 December 1961 When presenting a general programme about star-clusters, in November 1961, it occurred to me that there was a good opportunity to clear up a minor problem - that of the number of stars in the Pleiades visible without a telescope. The cluster is known popularly as the ‘Seven Sisters’ but it was generally stated that eight or nine stars could generally be made out under good conditions by people with normal eyesight.

I therefore asked for the co-operation of those who watched the programme, and the results were very satisfactory. Hundreds of viewers co-operated, and the conclusion was clear-cut: most people

could indeed see seven stars. About 10 per cent recorded eight or nine; a few could make out only 5 or 6; the highest reliable figure was 10. When I had sorted out the obviously erroneous observations (including that of the viewer who recorded no less than 170 stars, having included not only the rest of the constellation Taurus, but also Orion!) it was apparent that the percentage of 'seven-star’ results was well over 85. Therefore, the cluster’s nickname of the Seven Sisters is more appropriate than had been previously thought.

Using Small Astronomical Telescopes 28 December 1961 From time to time I have had complaints that I have dealt too much with observations made with very large telescopes, and which are therefore beyond the range of the amateur. This is certainly a valid point, though it is not easy to overcome. Accordingly, we decided to devote one programme to the use of small instruments, which will provide some fascinating hours of enjoyment for the users even if they cannot lead to epoch-making discoveries. On the programme, I was joined by the well-known science correspondent L. Marsland Gander.

A Living Universe?

1 March 1962 Everyone wants to know the answer to the question ‘Is there life on other worlds?’ Much, of course, depends upon what is meant by ‘life'; we have good evidence that living organisms flourish on Mars, but conditions there seem unsuitable for advanced life-forms, and if we are to find other intelligent races we must, presumably, go beyond our Solar System. Whether this will ever be possible seems to be highly dubious.

However, there was much to be said about the whole matter, and it was even possible to do some practical experimentation, which was undertaken on behalf a/-The Sky at Night programme by Dr F. L. Jackson, the London research bacteriologist who is also an amateur astronomer (in 1963 he succeeded me as Director of the Mercury and Venus Section of the British Astronomical Association). Jackson's preliminary results were reported in the programme of February 1962, and subsequent work has not altered the conclusions given then. We also discussed the possibility that certain meteorites might contain organic materials. There was much argument about this going on at the time, and the controversy still continues, though it is probably true to say that few authorities have much faith in the organic content of meteoritic bodies.

In the article as printed below, I have deleted one paragraph relating to Venus. In 1962 it was still thought possible that Venus was a watery world, with wide oceans and — perhaps - primitive marine life; since then, the U.S. rocket Mariner II has sent back information which, if correct, shows the planet to be overwhelmingly hostile, though definite doubts remain.

Astronomy and the Ancients 28 June 1962 Most people know at least something about the stone circles scattered here and there across Britain, and of which Stonehenge is the most famous. It is often maintained that these stone circles have an astronomical significance, though we remain uncertain of their exact purpose. In the ig62 June programme, a description was given of a fascinating theory by George Henderson, who carried out some additional research especially for the purpose. There is still discussion as to whether the theory is valid; I suggest that it would provide grounds for a thorough survey to be carried out by archaeologists and prehistorians.

Can the Planets be contaminated?

20 September 1962 In September 1962, the Mariner II vehicle was on its way toward Venus, and keeping to its calculated course. No landing was to be attempted, but the very fact that such an experiment had become possible underlined the need for thorough decontamination of all space probes, which might actually reach other worlds. An emphatic statement to this effect had been made by Professor Sir Bernard Lovell, who made a recording for the programme; a recording was also made

by Dr George Hobby, who was in charge of the decontamination involved in the United States Ranger project, and Dr F. L. Jackson was in the studio with me. At the time of writing (July 1964), full international agreement on the matter is still lacking, and so the danger of unintentional contamination remains.

The Aberration of Starlight 3 January 1963 This particular programme was devised to mark the anniversary of the death of James Bradley, the third Astronomer Royal, one of whose major contributions to astronomy was the discovery of aberration. Taking part with me was Colin Ronan; we were able to show films which we took in the Octagon Room at the original Greenwich Observatory, where one of Bradley’s zenith telescopes still remains. Incidentally, the old Observatory is open to the public, and is well worth visiting.

The Satellites of Mars 7 March 1963 Of all the satellites in the Solar System, the two dwarf attendants of Mars are the most peculiar. It has even been suggested that they are artificial space- stations launched by the Martians, though it is true that theories of this sort are difficult to take seriously. However, it seemed worthwhile to devote a programme to these curious little bodies, despite the fact that large telescopes are needed to show them.

In 1727, the great satirist Jonathan Swift published his story Voyage to Laputa, one of the remarkable episodes in the life of Dr Lemuel Gulliver. This time Gulliver visited the flying island of

Laputa, and spent some time there. The people, he recorded, were assiduous astronomers, and paid great attention to the heavenly bodies: New Studies of Mars and Venus 4 April 1963 In December 1962, the US probe Manner II passed within ‘striking range’ of Venus. The results obtained were released in early ig6g, and proved to be most surprising. In particular, the surface temperature of the planet was given as -\-8oo degrees Fahrenheit, making Venus far too hot to support any life built upon the terrestrial pattern.

Doubts have been cast on the accuracy of the information; it has been pointed out that the Mariner instruments were designed to function at less than 10,000 miles from Venus, whereas in fact they had to operate from over 20,000 miles. However, most authorities consider that the results are at any rate of the right order. Further researches with unmanned vehicles will presumably provide confirmation or denial. Until this is done, there is little more that can be added.

Taking part in the programme was Howard Miles, of the Lanchester College of Technology at Coventry, who is Director of the Artificial Satellite Section of the British Astronomical Association.

Exploding Stars 25 April 1963 The appearance of a nova, or ‘new star’, always causes considerable interest in astronomical circles.

The nova of 1963, discovered by E. Dahlgren in Sweden and independently detected by the American observer L. Peltier, was no exception, even though it never became brilliant enough to be striking. It seems to have been a perfectly ordinary nova, and faded in the conventional way, though by mid-1964 it was still observable with moderate-sized telescopes.

To Other Worlds 23 May 1963 It is not always realized that the idea of space-travel is very old indeed, and dates back at least two thousand years. For the 1963 May programme, Dr Anthony R. Michaelis, the well-known science writer who is now science correspondent of the Daily Telegraph, joined me in discussing some of the old ideas — many of which seem far-fetched enough to-day, but some of which are nevertheless of the highest interest.

The Sun in Action 12 September 1963 During this programme, in which Professor C. W. Allen (Director of the University of London Observatory) took part, we were able to show parts of the ‘continuous solar movie’ assembled by

observers at Sacramento Peak in the United States. This was the first time that any of the film had been shown in Britain, and it was certainly spectacular.

During the programme, I said that solar minimum was expected in early 1964. This seems to have been borne out, though it is of course very difficult to decide upon the precise date of minimum. At any rate, it seems that solar activity should be on the increase again by the spring of 1965.

Bases on the Moon 3 October 1963 Twenty years ago, the idea of practical space research was widely regarded as a wild dream, and members of Interplanetary Societies were dismissed as cranks. Events have shown that the ‘cranks’’ were right.

The concept of a communications satellite was first put forward in 1943 by Arthur Clarke, who is known both as a theoretical astronaut and as a particularly skilled writer of science fiction {to say nothing of his activities in underwater photography). Arthur Clarke, whom I have known well for a great many years, now lives in Ceylon. During his brief visit to England in October 19631 was delighted that he was able to join me in a programme. Bravely, he ended by making some forecasts about what was likely to happen in the future; it will be interesting to see whether he was as accurate as he was in the 1930’s.

Legends of the Stars 19 December 1963 Everyone must be fascinated by the old myths associated with the star- patterns, and the Christmas season seemed to be a good time to present a programme about them. With me was Colin Ronan, who has made a special study of the ancient star-legends.

Ghosts of the Solar System 10 January 1964 As a change from the normal programmes, it was suggested that people would be interested in the various bodies of the Solar System which have been reported from time to time but which appear to have no real existence. These include the planet Vulcan, the satellite of Venus, and the ring of Neptune. Whether all these are in fact ‘ghosts' remains to be seen.

So far, no further information is available about the Jovian ring reported by S. Vsekhvyatsky, but the evidence seems to be rather against its existence, at least in the form suggested by Vsekhvyatsky.

Signals from Space 4 February 1964 Throughout the winter of 1963-64, Jupiter was a brilliant object, and provided observers with various surprises. Normally there are two distinct equatorial belts, but during this opposition, the

two belts seemed to combine, forming one equatorial ‘wedge’ - an appearance also found in 196263.

Considerable attention was paid to the problem of the radio emissions from Jupiter, and a full-scale programme of study was initiated by the Florida State University team in collaboration with F. W. Hyde at St Osyth, near Clacton. In the programme of February 1964 the preliminary results were given, indicating that Hyde’s own theory — that the emissions are basically solar - is likely to prove correct.

It had been intended to devote the whole programme to Jupiter, but in the event, there were two spectacular developments in space research. The American rocket Ranger VI landed on the Moon, and there was also the launching of the balloon satellite Echo II. These could not be omitted, and so Hyde and I were joined in the studio by Howard Miles, who talked about Echo, and Peter Stewart, who discussed the reasons for the failure of the cameras carried in Ranger VI. The Clouds of Magellan 1 April 1964 Among the most fascinating objects in the sky are the two Clouds of Magellan, or Nubecula; They are too far south to be visible from Europe, but European observatories have been co-operating in studies of them. Actual photographs are taken from southern hemisphere stations, and the theoretical work is being undertaken on an international scale.

A great deal of this work is being carried out at the Armagh Observatory, in Northern Ireland.

Armagh Observatory is extremely interesting m many ways, and so we decided to go therefore a Sky at Night programme. Dr E. M. Lindsay, the Director, could not have been more helpful - indeed, he joined in the broadcast, and showed himself to be an expert in television technique as well as in his own sphere of astrophysics. I must also pay tribute to Mrs Lindsay and to the Armagh staff, who made our stay at the Observatory so very pleasant.

The Brightest Objects in the Universe 24 July 1964 One of the most important astronomical discoveries of recent times, if not the most important of all, was that of the objects known variously as quasars, quasi-stellar objects, or simply as QSO’s.

Thousands of millions of times more luminous than the Sun, if present evidence is to be trusted, they look like faint and unspectacular stars, but they are in fact infinitely more dramatic. Despite our lack of knowledge as to their true nature, it was clear that a programme would have to be devoted to them, and on this occasion, I was again joined by one of the regular visitors to The Sky at Night, Colin Ronan.

Close-up of the Moon 8 August 1964 This last article - written after the rest of the book had gone to press - differs from the others inasmuch as it has not been published before. When the U.S. rocket Ranger VII was dispatched toward the Moon on 28 July 1964, there was considerable excitement everywhere, plus a general feeling that this time the programme of taking lunar photographs from close range would be carried through successfully. I made a fleeting appearance on television after News Extra on 29 July, and said that in my view the interesting problems likely to be solved were (1) whether the lunar seas were in fact deep dust-drifts, and (2) whether there were many small craterlets too tiny to be seen from Earth. I also said that I had the most serious doubts about the existence of dust, and that I expected large numbers of minor craterlets.

The landing-point of Ranger VII was known, and when it duly hit the Moon on 31 July, after having sent back more than 4,000 photographs, it was clear that we would have to present a Sky at Night ‘special’. This was duly broadcast after the end of normal programme time. I was joined by Peter Stewart, the rocket expert, and we tried to call up the Jet Propulsion Laboratories in Pasadena, California. Unfortunately, we were unable to establish two-way communication. I could hear Pasadena, Pasadena could hear the control centre in London, and control centre could hear both of us, but that was all. Finally, some thirty seconds before transmission was due to begin, I rapped out a series of questions, which were repeated from control centre and answered by Pasadena.

Half a dozen of the Ranger VII pictures had been sent across to us, so that we were able to put them on the screen less than twelve hours after they had been taken. It was all most interesting and quite different from our abortive effort with Lunik IV over a year earlier! On that occasion (April 1963), we undertook a similar Sky at Night special as the Soviet probe, launched on 2 April, neared the Moon. The general consensus of opinion was that the Lunik would either make a ‘soft landing’ or else deposit a package of some kind on to the Moon. During the vital period I carried out a live transmission from Lime Grove; I had a telephone link with Moscow, a radio link with Jodrell Bank (where Colin Ronan was stationed, and where Professor Sir Bernard Lovell generously gave up some of his time to join in), and cameras fixed to the large telescopes at Edinburgh (with Dr Peter Fellgett commenting) and Patcham (where George Hole was in readiness). The idea was to get the latest news from Moscow, listen to the signals from Jodrell Bank, and observe the impact from Edinburgh and Patcham. What actually happened was that nobody in Moscow seemed to know anything, Jodrell Bank could not hear anything, it was raining in Edinburgh and cloudy at Patcham, and in any case, Lunik IV missed the Moon by four thousand miles. The programme provided a perfect instance of the workings of Spode’s Law.