The Sky at Night

Patrick Moore visits the world's most powerful telescope, the Keck reflector, now being constructed on top of Mauna Kea in Hawaii.

It is not necessary to have a large telescope in order to take a real interest in the night sky. Binoculars will show a great deal. Patrick Moore takes viewers on a "guided tour".

Patrick Moore finds out more about asteroids, the minor planets which are junior members of the Sun's family.

At the Anglo-Australian Observatory in New South Wales, Dr David Malin has developed new techniques for photographing the stars. With Patrick Moore.

An anniversary edition to celebrate the first transmission of The Sky at Night35 years ago. A newcomer to television then, Patrick Moore has continued to present the programme ever since. Tonight he reports on the influence the space age has had on people's understanding and knowledge of astronomy.

Professor Arnold Wolfendale, joins Patrick Moore to discuss the latest information received from the Cosmic Background Explorer satellite,

A look at the outer giant planets, Uranus and Neptune. The Voyager probe missions that by-passed Uranus in 1986 and Neptune in 1989 were covered by Sky at Night at the time. Further analysis has since been carried out, and Patrick Moore sums up the new findings.

The Giotto spacecraft encountered Halley's Comet in 1986 and escaped. The same craft recently made close-range studies of the comet Grigg-Skellerup. Patrick Moore and Drjohn Mason are joined by Professor Susan McKenna-Lawlor to discuss the problems of comets.

It is usually accepted that the first telescope was made in 1608. But new evidence shows that the first reflector was made in England, by Leonard Digges , many years before. In this programme Colin Ronan joins Patrick Moore to explain the principle, and to show the first "working" Digges-type telescope to have been made for more than 400 years.

Patrick Moore studies the Great Spiral in Andromeda, a galaxy containing more than 100,000 million stars.

Dr David Allen joins Patrick Moore to describe research aimed at showing surface details of the planet Venus.

Patrick Moore sees how the multiple mirror telescope in Arizona is to be changed.

Professor Sir Francis Graham-Smith , the former Astronomer Royal, joins Patrick Moore to discuss the latest findings about the fascinating Crab Nebula.