The Sky at Night is a monthly documentary television programme on astronomy produced by the BBC.

The show had the same permanent presenter, Patrick Moore, from its first broadcast on 24 April 1957 until 7 January 2013. The latter date was a posthumous broadcast, which followed Moore’s death on 9 December 2012. This made it the longest-running programme with the same presenter in television history. Many early episodes are missing, either because the tapes were wiped, thrown out, or because the episode was broadcast live and never recorded in the first place.

Beginning with the 3 February 2013 edition, the show was co-presented by Lucie Green and Chris Lintott. Since December 2013 Maggie Aderin-Pocock has been a presenter. The programme’s opening and closing theme music is “At the Castle Gate”, from the incidental music to Pelléas et Mélisande, written in 1905 by Jean Sibelius, performed by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and conducted by Sir Thomas Beecham.

This episode:
A special Question Time edition of the programme, recorded at the University of Exeter as part of the British Science Association’s Science Festival. The panel is chaired by science journalist Dallas Campbell and made up of The Sky at Night presenters Chris Lintott, Maggie Aderin-Pocock and Pete Lawrence, who are joined on stage by Dr Claire Davies, who studies star and planet formation, and Dr Hannah Wakeford, who specialises in the atmospheres of exoplanets. The panel answer questions covering all things astronomical from The Sky at Night’s avid viewers and from audience members. We also hear about updates from the Voyager missions to life on other planets and discover where the panel would want to send future space probes if they had the chance.

Links:
The Sky at Night