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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:
The team explore one of the biggest stories in space news, the ‘city killer’ asteroid 2024 YR4. First observed on 27 December 2024, it soon became one of the biggest threats from an asteroid ever detected, with the potential to cause a heat blast that could vaporise solid rock, wind blasts five times the speed of the strongest hurricane and a shockwave that would flatten buildings and trees for hundreds of miles. This was a potential natural disaster we needed to respond to as a planet. So how well did we do? Our team of presenters are on hand to find out, and while YR4 was later downgraded to a near miss, what has it told us about our ability to react when an asteroid strike is on its way? George Dransfield kicks off, talking us through the damage an asteroid like YR4 could do and why some say we are overdue an asteroid strike of this size. But how will we know if it’s truly on its way? Chris Lintott meets Dr Meg Schwamb at a football pitch – which it turns out is the perfect place to explain how the probability of a strike is calculated. Following the same highs and lows they do when a ball just misses the goal, they explain why the probability of asteroid 2024 YR4 hitting earth first rose so quickly before it fell. It turns out it wasn’t the maths being wrong!

Luckily, next time the numbers say an asteroid impact is on its way, we do have ways of defending ourselves, Maggie Aderin-Pocock takes a tea break to explain some of the options, from nudging it to nuking it – they all have their pros and cons. But to know our best plan of action, we need to understand more about the asteroids, and George meets up with Dr Carly Howett to find out how Nasa’s Lucy Mission could provide us with invaluable information for any future strikes. With this wealth of information about any potential asteroids heading our way, Maggie meets Prof Hugh Lewis in Southampton to discover how the international community is set up to respond to any future threats, and to find out who will decide what action to take and the possible consequences it may have. But the skies and the asteroids in it aren’t just a scary threat to humanity; when we stop and look up, there are some beautiful sights to be seen, and Pete Lawrence is on hand to tell us what to look out for in the coming months. Join us for an exciting episode that looks beyond the headlines, to see what efforts were made to protect us from an asteroid that could have wiped out a city the size of Greater London – and beyond.

Links:
The Sky at Night