Patrick Moore’s final Sky at Night

Last night I was working on my astronomy course as I’d got a coursework deadline today. I got it finished just before midnight which was good timing as it meant I could watch Patrick Moore’s final Sky at Night before bed.
It was an enjoyable and fitting tribute. It appeared that part of the show was a planned feature recorded before his death, on setting up a new telescope, where some lucky members of the public were at Patrick’s Selsey home in Selsey, Sussex. This was followed by clips that reminded me what an inspiration and an entertainer he was. Usually Sky at a night isn’t on iPlayer until all the repeats have shown. This month it is up after the first broadcast. His death, combined with this week’s BBC Stargazing Live is likely to mean this episode will pick up a lot more views than usual.
It won’t be the same without Patrick but I do hope the series continues.

Voyager: To The Final Frontier

I watched Voyager: To The Final Frontier on iPlayer this morning. It’s not available online anymore, just clips of it at the link above. I’d got it stacked up in my backlog of things I hadn’t watched yet. It was another great programme from the BBC. Voyager 2 is in the news again as it’s about to leave the Solar System. It is incredible to think this piece of 70s technology is still going and still sending back valid data. It was interesting to see how Voyager’s technology has remained the same while back here on Earth the equipment that it talks to has changed massively.
It’s caused me to read Murmurs of Earth by Carl Sagan (and others) that I picked up in a second hand bookshop recently. It’s all about the Voyager Golden Record that was mounted on the Voyager space probes. It’s purpose was partly a message in a bottle in the incredibly unlikely ever another civilisation found it, and partly to celebrate the achievements of our civilisation and cultures.