The long-running BBC astronomy programme The Sky at Night is returning to our screens in April 2024.
The production team and presenters Maggie Aderin-Pocock, Chris Lintott and Pete Lawrence have been taking a short break, but the new series is due to begin in spring.
The first episode of the 2024 series of The Sky at Night will broadcast on BBC Four, Monday 8 April at 10pm. Its first repeat will be on BBC Four, 11 April at 7pm.
Below is the latest information about the first episode of The Sky at Night in 2024.
For more information about the show, keep up to date via the BBC Four Sky at Night webpage.
The next episode of The Sky at Night
April 2024 episode - Space Rock Return
In the April 2024 episode, The Sky at Night looks at NASA's OSIRIS-REx mission, which in 2023 brought back a sample of Asteroid Bennu to Earth.
The team discover what it takes to analyse the sample of space rock, what it might tell us about planet Earth and perhaps even the origins of life.
The episode features Professor Sara Russell & Dr. Ashley King from the Natural History Museum in London, who were both involved with the OSIRIS-REx mission.
Chris Lintott discovers the challenges the spacecraft encountered and learns about Sara and Ashley’s work on the space rock. By understanding the journey the asteroid has been on, they can learn more about the conditions in which the Earth formed and how our planet became the water rich place it is today.
Maggie Aderin-Pocock heads to Diamond Light Source to meet Dr. Sharif Ahmed, who explains how the very large machine housed there produces light 10 billion times brighter than the sun, from which powerful x-rays are created, allowing scientists to analyse the very smallest of samples.
George Dransfield heads to Royal Holloway University to meet Dr. Queenie Chan, who’s looking for tiny bubbles of liquid in the space rock samples, in which she may discover the secrets of how the building blocks of life could have formed.
And astronomer Pete Lawrence is back to tell us what can be seen in this month’s night sky.
2023 series
November 2023 episode
The last episode of The Sky at Night in 2023 was broadcast in November and was a collaborative episode with Radio 4's The Infinite Monkey Cage.
Maggie, Chris and Pete joined Professor Brian Cox, Robin Ince and Dara Ó Briain in front of a live audience at the BBC’s Radio Theatre to discuss their love of astronomy and advice for stargazing.
Outside the Radio Theatre Pete Lawrence hosted a ‘Star Party’, joining amateur astronomers to observe the Moon, Saturn and Jupiter using binoculars, telescopes and the naked eye.
And the show looked back at 66 years of stargazing with The Sky at Night.
October 2023 episode
The October 2023 episode of The Sky at Night is an hour-long ‘Question Time’ edition, recorded live at the University of Exeter for the British Science Association’s Science Festival.
Chaired by science journalist Dallas Campbell, the Question Time panel includes Chris Lintott, Maggie Aderin-Pocock and Pete Lawrence.
They're 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 from Sky at Night viewers, BBC Sky at Night Magazine readers and from audience members.
Questions cover all things astronomical. We 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.
September 2023 episode
In the September 2023 episode of The Sky at Night, Maggie travels to the Chilean Atacama Desert to get a sneak peek at the workings of the Very Large Telescope - or VLT.
The VLT has been responsible for some of the greatest astronomical breakthroughs of all time.
It is located at the Paranal Observatory in one of the driest places on earth apart from the North and South poles.
This makes it the perfect place for an observatory because there is little moisture in the air distorting the view of the stars.
Maggie meets some of the scientists, engineers and astronomers working at the site.
She meets the head of maintenance, support and engineering Maxime Boccas, who leads the operation of cleaning the VLT's mirrors.
Maggie also meets astronomer Dr Joe Anderson, who uses the VLT’s specialised instruments – devices that analyse light from the universe, helping scientists to see and better understand the cosmos.
And Maggie meets Vanessa Peidro - the Head of Logistics and responsible for maintaining not just the buildings and vehicles but also managing food, water and other facilities that cater for 150-160 people on site at any one time.
She speaks to physicist Francoise Delplancke-Stroebele and her colleague Frederic Gonte, who are leading the VLT's next upgrade – Gravity .
And Maggie also finds out about the Extremely Large Telescope or ELT, which is currently in construction.
August 2023 episode
August 2023 episode - Black Holes: Searching for the Unknown
In the August 2023 episode of The Sky at Night, the team investigate the mysterious objects known as black holes.
Dr Becky Smethurst of the University of Oxford reveals how a black hole forms from the death of a star.
Chris investigates whether black holes deserve their menacing portrayal in popular culture and what would happen if we got too close to the event horizon.
Maggie explores how scientists are trying to understand more about black holes by meeting Dr Tessa Baker who works on LIGO.
Chris meets with Dr James Nightingale who has recently discovered one of the largest black holes using new computational technology and gravitational lensing.
They explore the relationship between black holes and galaxies, as its thought that within the centre of every galaxy lies a supermassive black hole.
Pete Lawrence shows us how to find a black hole in the sky, and Saturn at its brightest and best.
George Dransfield visits Dr Silke Weinfurtner at her black hole laboratory where they are simulating features of black holes here on earth.
July 2023 episode
The Sky at Night team investigate the controversial world of alien communication.
If we discover aliens, how would we communicate with them, what should we say and should we even communicate with them at all?
The episode follows astrobiologist Doug Vakoch on a trip to the UK.
Vakoch runs an organisation aiming to contact extra terrestrials and is in Britain to meet with experts who can help with his mission.
He meets Prof Arik Kershenbaum, a zoologist from the University of Cambridge specialising in animal communication and xenolinguistics – the language of aliens.
He also meets Paul Quast, a researcher from the Beyond the Earth Foundation who is assembling a ‘Companion Guide to Earth’ for future humans and passing aliens.
Exoplaneteer George Dransfield meets astrophysicist Professor Tim O’Brien, who reveals how scientists use radioastronomy to listen for extra terrestrial signals.
And Chris Lintott delves into the history of scientists trying to send messages to aliens. And he asks whether we should really be trying to communicate with them at all.
June 2023 episode
Episode title: The UK Space Race
In the June 2023 episode of The Sky at Night, the team look into the science and engineering that’s helping the UK blast into space. The race is on to be the first company to successfully launch a rocket into orbit from British soil.
Chris visits Skyrora, a rocket company near Glasgow, to find out how rockets are built and why launches go wrong.
Maggie is given a preview of the new National Satellite Testing Facility. Until now British built satellites have been shipped abroad for final tests, but this is all about to change with the opening of the NSTF. Maggie sees how a satellite up to 7000kg will be vibrated to simulate launch conditions and steps inside the vacuum chamber where they will be exposed to extreme temperatures.
900 objects have been launched into space in the last year. Chris meets Professor Andy Lawrence to talk about the impact this is having on astronomy, and the images captured by telescopes such as Hubble.
Astronomers are currently keeping track of more than 23,000 pieces of space debris larger than 10cm, and this space junk poses a danger to new satellites as well as the astronauts on board the ISS. Radio astronomer Professor Danielle George visits Clearspace, a company hoping to solve the space junk problem with technology designed to capture debris in orbit.
Pete Lawrence reveals why June is a great month for solar observing, as well as the summer asterisms.
May 2023 episode
In the May 2023 episode, the Sky at Night team explores the threat of an asteroid impact on earth.
Around 2,300 asteroids have been identified as ‘potentially hazardous’ and scientists reckon about a million ‘near earth objects’ are yet to be accounted for.
Detecting these possible threats is now a priority for space scientists. And they’re developing methods of planetary defence that sound like the stuff of science fiction.
Maggie meets Professor Alan Fitzsimmons, expert in asteroid observation, to learn how the latest technology monitors near earth asteroids.
He explains which ones are a current concern, and why we missed the dangerous Chelyabinsk meteor – a 9000 ton fireball that exploded in the sky above Russia. Could it happen again?
Chris meets the Open University’s Professor Simon Green, who has been involved in NASA’s recent planetary defence mission ‘DART’.
In this mission a spacecraft was flown directly into an asteroid in a successful attempt to change its orbit – and the hope is that this could be repeated if an asteroid was identified as a real threat to earth. Simon demonstrates why smashing into an asteroid is even more complicated than it sounds.
Our inhouse stargazing expert Pete Lawrence explains how to get a rare sighting of Jupiter passing behind the moon – and why it is that we can see the moon in the daytime.
And exoplaneteer George Dransfield is at Royal Holloway University to meet planetary scientist Dr Queenie Chan.
Her recent analysis of the famous Winchcombe meteorite offers new evidence in support of asteroids bringing life – as well as destruction – to Earth.
April 2023 episode
Episode title: The Search for Alien Life
Synopsis: In the April 2023 episode of The Sky at Night, the team are exploring the search for extra-terrestrial life.
The search for life beyond Earth is a popular talking point at the moment, and scientists are able to use advanced engineering and technology to search for habitable conditions within our own Solar System, as well as looking for signs of life at exoplanets, which are planets orbiting stars beyond our Sun.
In the April episode, Dr Maggie Aderin-Pocock visits Professor Mark Sephton at Imperial College London – a key scientist involved with the Perseverance Rover mission on Mars. The Perseverance sample return mission will bring material from the surface of the Red planet back to Earth - the first time such an endeavour has ever been attempted.
Prof Sephton will reveal how he and his colleagues use images sent back to Earth by the rover to decide the best places to capture the Martian samples. He'll demonstrate the technology he’ll use to analyse the samples of Martian rock for signs of life when they are brought back to Earth.
April sees the launch of the European Space Agency JUICE mission (Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer ). Professor Chris Lintott meets leading scientist Professor Michele Dougherty, who reveals why icy moons like Europa, Ganymede and Callisto are the key places to search for signs of life beyond Earth, and what this has to do with a game of squash.
And stargazing expert Pete Lawrence tells us how this month we can see Venus in a dramatic scene alongside the Hyades and Pleiades clusters.
Exoplanet expert George Dransfield is in Chile searching for earth-like planets outside our solar system. She reveals how potentially habitable exoplanets are identified, as she carries out essential telescope maintenance in the Atacama desert.
Back in the UK she meets Dr Sean McMahon – an astrobiologist at Edinburgh University investigating how reflected light could be used to actually search for life on exoplanets in the future.
Keep up to date with the show via The Sky at Night website on the BBC iPlayer and or discover more astronomy on the BBC.
