Episode 1 Stargazing Live

We've travelled halfway around the world. Trekked for hours into the

Australian bush. In search of some of the most beautiful sights our

planet has to offer. We've come to a place of amazing

scenery. And unique wildlife. But where we're going the true beauty

only comes out when the sun goes down. Because crowning all this is a

glorious night sky. And this is what we're here to see,

the arc of the Milky Way. We're' on top of a mount app. Behind us is the

Australian bush, kangaroo, snakes, spiders and all that stuff. We don't

mind because we are up here and looking at this line of stars. Maybe

100 billion, maybe 400 billion stars above us and a sight you can't see

from the UK. One of the reasons we are here, we are pointing directly

towards the centre of the Milky Way galaxy wef are not looking at the

galaxy from outside we are are looking at the Milky Way from

within. That happened is the heart of the Milky Way with exotic objects

such as things called S Stars and a super massive Black Hole. It's aened

woerful thought my thumb might be covering thousands of solar systems,

planets, perhaps like our own, planets, perhaps, even with life on

them. Which brings us on to one of the most exciting things about this

series of Stargazing. What we want you to do with us is help us find

the ninth plan net our solar system. This will be an incredible search

and possibly a historic one. It's worth reiterating. There is

reasonable evidence there is something big out there in the outer

solar system, perhaps a ninth planet. We think that one of you

should find it. It could be incredible. In the meantime, let's

just sit back and enjoy this incredible sight.

This observe Tory is place of huge importance historical. I remember

this place. One of the places ingrained in my mind. When I was

growing up and into astronomy in the 80s the telescope was the one that

took colour images of the sky for the first time. All those images

that you remember, if you are my age, with beautiful bright colours,

they come from this place. Which is why I've always wanted to visit it.

There are more practical reasons why it's good we are here right now. We

are moving into spring in the UK. In Australia they are moving into

autumn. She had summer rains and clear the dust out of the air. As

well as that, it's a new moon. There is little distraction from moon

light. This whole area is Australia's first international Dark

Sky Park. The conditions for viewing the sky are perfect and allows us to

see things, as we said before, you wouldn't see in the UK. At the

moment, we are lucky because Saturn is beautifully placed from

Australia, high in the sky tonight. It's at an aspect where the rings

are open. We can see detail in the rings. That view of Saturn from the

UK won't be available for around a decade or so. We are at one of the

world's premier observe Tories. 50 telescopes and hundreds of

astronomers we can chat to about Stargazing. Since we aren on the

other side of the planet we will take you on an adventure across the

whole of Australia. -- are. Ready when you are everybody. That

way. All right. In the vast deserts of Australia's interior we search

for fragments of a shooting star. They landed somewhere out here. This

is not going to be easy. Easy. We will take a trip to the Great

Barrier Reef, a natural wonder on earth. With a surprising connection

to the wonder of the heavens. We will discover the ancient indigenous

legends of the southern sky. The Milky Way for us is the big river in

the sky. On a trip to the Northern Territory. There is no way for

heating to hide. We explore how this country is on the front-line of the

search for extraterrestrial civilisations. -- ET. I realised, I

should say why we are in a car. The site is big we have to be driven

around it. It's almost dawn here. I've been asked a few times, how can

you do Stargazing Live in Australia, the reason is this is one of the few

times of the year where we have darkness for about another 20 or 30

minutes before the sun comes up and it's dark where you are in the UK.

We have come to Australia, as you know, we landed into Sydney.

Six-and-a-half hours driver to the Warrumbungle National Park. That

kangaroo isn't there as an interesting cartoon. It's easy to.

Couture wildlife. Some of the giants bouncing mice this country made

available. There are families bounding around the place punching

eechlg each other. This is a fox, I think. Have you considered a career

in natural - when Sir David handles over the mantel will it be Dara? A

large pouncing mouse. The project, the search for a ninth planet, it's

real science. We have a hypothesis. We will describe it later. There may

be something big out there. We have the data. We need you to look. Only

two people in history who found a planet in 1781 and in 1846. It will

be you in 2017 if there is one out. There As well as that, we want your

questions, photographs of space. Email them to us at

[email protected] or you use the #askstargazing. Why is it the things

we are seeing here can't be seen from the UK? We have a diagram. A

diagram. It's a big set, isn't it? I love this. The Milky Way. Here is

our galaxy. It's worth describing the geometry. The solar system is

around here. That is the centre of the galaxy over there. The scale is

remarkable. That is 25,000 light-years. Light travelling at

186,000 miles a second. It takes 25,000 years to go from the centre

of the galaxy to the solar system. The solar system is at a steep

angle, 60 degrees. You might think the planets go round the sun, they

don't. They go like that. The earth is inclined to the plain of the

solar system, 23 degrees. The up shot of all that is the earth is

around here, something like that. You are in the UK now. You see that

because of those angles, even though the earth rotates around once a day,

you see that you can never from the UK see essentially through the earth

to the centre of the galaxy. You see a beautiful Milky Way, this is it.

The Dara cams... The view is different. This is the view we get.

Essentially you see through two arms. The arm we are in and the arm

outside. That is the UK. By contrast, here you are facing inward

and you get this incredible view across the Milky Way into the

galatic centre. That is the view from Australia. The constellations

we see, for example, are they contained or are we seeing

constellations further out? This is not very big. It's about 3,500,000

light-years across. Not big in galatic terms. Most of the of bright

stars are in this arm with us. We will talk about this cluster out

here. 16,000 light-years away -- 3,500. When we gaze on the Majesty

of the night sky we are looking at this? Yes. Will we always face this

way. The solar system itself is orbiting around the Milky Way galaxy

once every quarter of a billion years or so, 250 million years. If

you wind time forward, about 100 million years, if we are still here,

and the solar system stays in the same orientation, which is not a

given, the earth would be tilted like this and then the UK will be

pointing towards the galatic centre. It's a question of being patient, I

suppose. Yes. Now we are not here on our own. We are joined this year by

Bonn Bonn Bonn who is on the same mountain range away from these

lights to get a beautiful view looking at the southern skies.

We are at the top of Mount Woorut. I can't tell you how excited I am to

be here enjoying this incredible view. You know what, nothing can

prepare you for such a sight as the Milky Way. It's bursting with stars

and it's so bright it could almost cast a shadow here, especially since

we have a new moon below the horizon tonight. We have come away from base

camp, out here we are out of the way of every bit of light pollution. We

have #2e78 telescopes to our live cameras. We will showcase the

southern skies in all of their glory. It is a view that's

unfamiliar to us back in Britain, but fear not, we have our own expert

local guide with us, Mr Greg Quicke. He is making observations a he we

speak. I'm excited to be doing this with you. Thank you for joining us.

A pleasure. You know the skies very well? I have a lot of friends, you

could say, for sure. Millions, billions of them? Absolutely. They

are your friends, too. There is so much going up there that is clear to

me already. How and when did you go about finding your way around up

there? I spent most of my life in swag sleeping under the stars. I

didn't set out to learn about stars. They were there, so was I, we did

get to know each other. What a wonderful way to find the dream

career, passion career. I love it. It found me, really. Indeed. Greg

will share that passion for the Southern Hemisphere night skies with

us for the next three nights showing us the incredible things we don't

see back in Britain. You are in for a treat. It truly is a spectacle

here and one that has shaped the lives of Australians for thousands

of years. When the first people came to

Australia they explained the world around them looking up at the big

southern skies. Today, indigenous Australians still do. The stars are

a calendar, a clock and a secret code. They reveal a network of

ancient trails that span the whole of thisle huge country. They're

called, songlines. Songlines criss-cross all the way through

there. An elder of southern western Australian joins us and he's an

expert astronomy. One of them is just over here. Running through

there. Tonight we are following one of the trails these people have

walked for generations, believed to be the tracks left behind by the

creator, ancestors, as they shaped the world. A time called, the

dreaming. Our creation story centres around a time when there was nothing

on the earth. Right. Flat and featureless. Yep. A heavy sky and

the great, big serpent moved across the land leaving valleys and pushing

up hills where ever it went. Creating what would become trails,

trade routes, songlines. They are pathways that people walk along.

They are also where a person lives their complete life cycle. They are

born on them, they gather everything they need from close-proximity and

eventually they die and are buried on them. Songlines lead to water

holes, food and meeting places. Everything you need to survive out

in the bush. This one we are travelling on tonight goes for over

300 miles. We're not carrying a map. The pathways of Noel's people have

been passed down to him through songs, stories and Stargazing. Now,

he's responsible for keeping them alive for future generations.

When you're teaching the children, you lie flat on your back.

One of the first things you learn about is that W.

And then across to this, orange, I guess.

Noel's W stretches out either side of what we recognise

as the constellation Orion, and is marked out by five

How does this W in the sky relate to what we see on the ground, Noel?

Here, if you start in the South, then you go across from there

through to... Then back up towards Waverock. Then back across through

up to Lake Moore, that is your W. And here it is in the sky. Almost an

exact mirror image. Each star lines up with a prominent granite rock in

the land which marks a turning point along the songline. These maps in

the sky had shown the way through life for generations of indigenous

Australians. And their influence goes on. Because they've also shaped

how Australians get around today. When people came here to stay, they

came ashore and the vegetation was so thick, it was almost impenetrable

on horseback. So they followed the trail that were already here. Where

our people had walked the thousands of years, or from water hole to

water hole. When they made their roads, they also made those over the

ancient songlines, the ancient trail. All across Australian, the

modern road network follows ancient songlines. With the tracks

themselves and the roads, they are a blueprint. Like that. Songlines are

still helping Australians navigate this vast country. They may be

ancient, but their power is with us even today. Greg, just how much have

you learned about the night skies from indigenous culture? When you

spend time in the country with the people, that knowledge seeps into

you. You start to realise that certain stars will tell you when the

stingrays are fat. There's a formation we had in the sky tonight

with Scorpio on the eastern horizon and Orion on the western horizon and

the Crow is still overhead tonight. That tells us it's time to go salmon

fishing. Sky and Earth are inextricably linked. There is a

highway north of here that follows another ancient songline, the line

of the EMU. How important is the symbol of the Emu? Where I come from

the EE new is the Creator God -- the Emu is the Creator God. He made the

rocks and the trees, he made the kangaroos. He taught the people

right from wrong. So if there's a songline there must be a Emu in the

sky, how do you find that Emu? After he walked all over the country and

left his footprints, which we now call dinosaur tracks, he did go into

the sky. Where? This dark patch, here. What is that? That's the

Coalsack Nebula. It's also the head of the Emu. Where's the body of the

Emu? The neck comes down this way. It's quite long. The back of the Emu

comes down this way. It's huge. We have an image to show you to show

how much of the Milky Way it spans. It is the most extraordinary sight

in the sky. Massive in the sky. It covers this much the sky. It is a

busy sky with a lot of other dark patches, how do you locate the

Coalsack Nebula to begin with? It's right next to the Southern Cross.

The famous Southern Cross on your flag. The Southern Cross is right

there above us? Yes, the stars in order of brightness are alpha, beta,

gamma, Delta and Epsilon. It's so fantastic to see them like this. And

you can find this using two famous stars called Alpha Centauri and beta

Centauri. You can point them out for us. That's Alpha Centauri, and beta

Centauri. They are the two pointer stars for the Southern Cross. Alpha

Centauri is a fascinating staff are many other reasons. This is our view

of it. After the sun it's the closest star we can see, it looks

like one bright start of the naked eye but through the telescope you

can just see there's a bit more to it than that. Yes there is. By the

way, some people think this is an live because it's dark ear and dark

at home. Someone on Twitter says, there's nothing in that canon, is

there! This picture of Alpha Centauri was taken today, sorry, the

middle of the night basically, by me. I only bought the camera in

Heathrow on the way here! You can see Alpha Centauri in the corner.

It's very beautiful. This is Alpha Centauri and Beta Centauri. What is

beautiful in this picture is the subject here which is called a Omega

Centauri. If I zoom in, you can see there's something interesting about

it. It's a fuzzy blob. We've got a live picture of that now. Look at

that. That is a live picture now from a telescope. You see it's a

swarm of stars. It's called a globular cluster. There are

something like 10 million stars in there. The average distance between

them is about 0.1 light-years. Imagine what it would be like to be

in there. It's one of the older structures in the Milky Way. We

think it's probably the nucleus of a captured galaxy that merged with the

Milky Way 10 billion years ago. It's a very beautiful photograph. We'll

so saw Alpha Centauri. Alpha Centauri is at the top there. We saw

that was eight double star system. Beta Centauri is interesting as

well. It gives you some sense, when you look at the constellation, you

fill the stars are connected, they aren't. Beta Centauri is 100 times

further away than Alpha Centauri. But it looks just about the same

brightness on the sky. That's because that thing is a double star

system, 14,000 times more luminous than our sun. It's two stars and

each of them is around ten times the mass of the sun. Imagine the

violence in that system, Alpha and Beta Centauri. They are a pair of

Sun like stars. Beta is actually a triple system with a smaller star,

so is Alpha. There's also Proxima Centauri which is a red dwarf star

which is orbiting at a much greater distance. That is currently the

closest star to the Earth. It's a fascinating place because we've

detected it has a planet it. Proxima B is a prime target for our search

for extra terrestrial life. How long will it be before we get to visit?

White sandy beaches, sunshine, crystal clear waters. Earthbound

travellers have sought at the same old scenes since the package holiday

boom in the 70s. When planet Earth has nothing new to offer, try a

destination that's out of this world. Proxima B is Earth 's newly

discovered and nearest potentially habitable neighbour. An entirely

unexplored planet, ready and waiting for you, the more intrepid

traveller. At 4.5 light-years, the journey won't be a breeze, but there

is a highly qualified physicist working on a solution. A spacecraft

with a giant Lite sales propelled to 130 million mph by a huge laser on

Earth. Nano robots travel first. People later. And please, block out

around 20 years in your diary to get there! So what might you find an

touchdown? Well, things might be a little darker than you are used to.

Thanks to its red dwarf star, the light reaching Proxima B is just two

thirds as bright as some might honour. But you'll still need to

slap on the sunscreen. That star is close enough to bombard you with

deadly Stella Reyes. -- stellar rays. That radiation could produce a

truly spectacular light show, an alien aurora. And Proxima B's

sunsets are a real treat. It's a tidily locked planet so one side

always faces the sun. Find the right spot and you could enjoy golden

hour, every hour. It'll be the place for sports lovers. Extreme

temperature differences could generate winds of over 100 miles an

hour. Windsurfing, anyone? There could be a single worldwide ocean

covering the entire planet, so plan ahead and book a cruise. Although it

might be entirely rock, we don't know yet. Be the first to find out!

And how about the locals? Proxima B is comfortably inside the habitable

zone of its star, so it could already be home to someone or

something! There could be vast forests of lush vegetation. Though

expect glowing shades of red, purple and even black, adapted to catch the

dim light, while injuring the red dwarf star's lethal radiation. Just

one word of warning, no return flights are currently planned, so

this could be the last holiday you'll ever take! Terms and

conditions apply, cannot guarantee water, at basic price sustaining

resources. Definitely not Atol protected! I am picking my ticket

immediately after the show! Welcome back to the top of Mount Woorut.

We've had a question from a viewer who wants to know what is the best

bit of the Southern Hemisphere sky for you? Well, this is my home, it's

just the best place to be in the whole world. Can we have an

astronomical answer as well? No worries. We've got two galaxies out

here, two dwarf galaxies. You don't have the equivalent in the UK. They

are just amazing collections of stars. We've also got the two best

globular clusters in the sky. They are like solid balls of millions of

stars, which you simply can't see them in the UK. And we've got the

brightest and the busiest sections of the Milky Way too. So, take your

pick. So the Southern Hemisphere wins, is that what you're saying?

We've just got everything! Please keep your questions and images

coming in. We've got a citizen science experiment online, half a

million schoolchildren have been investigating how sleep patterns and

energy levels are affected when you change the clocks. You turned them

forward last weekend, here in New South Wales they will turn them back

this weekend. There is a brilliant interactive map with all of their

results on the BBC website. The Milky Way is beginning to fade from

view. We can see a lot of stars disappearing already as the light

from the approaching dawn is spreading across the sky. There's a

pretty gusty wind coming up Mount Woorut as well, heralding the dawn.

On our low light, highly sensitive cameras it looks a bit lighter than

it really is. Just to show you, let's switch to our regular cameras

so you can see what it's really like up here. It's still dark enough. In

fact it's dark enough for us to observe some of the brightest stars

in the sky, including Alpha Centauri which I can still see up there.

Also, the glorious Southern Cross is still visible up there against the

backdrop of our home galaxy. Here is what the Milky Way means to the

indigenous people who come from a few miles away.

The Milky Way, for us, is the Wurrum-Boorrool.

And when we look up there, we see that river.

We can show you where that river is on the Earth,

and we can show you where it starts and where it finishes.

Where the water spills out would be what they call the Coal Sack,

The Goolee-bhar tree is an old tree that died as a result of the water

being drained when the universe tips upside down.

And when we want to go home, when we're finished here on Earth,

and we've done our ceremonies, we go up through the hollow

And then we see the light at the other end, and we come

out at the other end, and we're home.

I'm sorry, Greg was giving it all that about the southern hem fierce

glock lard clusters. In the UK we have got N 13 a beautiful thing. You

can look at it after the programme. We have good glock lard clusters,

Greg. We will not keeping showing you Canning room footage. We have to

show you this one. This is behaviour that even the people here don't know

why they do this. They seem to gather around the observatory and

dance around them. It's weird. Dara who should be named David

Attenborough. There is is the telescope lit by the dawn. I popped

in to see what research they are doing now. Rising 1,000 meters on

top of the Warrumbungle Mountains the telescope is the jewel in the

Crown of the observatory. The biggest telescope in Australia.

Probably will always be the biggest telescope in Australia. Fred Watson

has been the astronomer in charge here for over 20 years. Pioneering

colour photographs of deep space, like this. First made the telescope

famous in the 1980s. A very famous telescope in the history of

astronomy. What is it being used for today? In we don't do photography

any more. Photography is long gone as a technique in astronomy. What we

do is something far more exciting. This is the business end of the

telescope. It is. In some way this is is where you would put the eye

piece if you were going to look through a telescope. What we do is,

where the image would have been formed for photography, we intercept

it with optical fibres. It means that you can place an optical fibre

on many different targets at once. What are the advantages? It let's

you look in detail at many objects simultaneously. You build up these

vast data sets where you are looking at the details of millions of

galaxies. That would have been impossible before fibreoptic

technology was used. With this technology, the telescope is

currently undertaking a major survey of distant galaxies. Each dot is a

galaxy? That's correct. When the telescope was first commissioned you

could take perhaps five or six photographs per night with it. Now,

with fibreoptic technology, you can image thousands of galaxies per

night. That means that this telescope is still one of the most

productive instruments in the world. As the sunsets, it's time for

astronomers to begin their nightly observations. But before they do, I

take the opportunity to climb to the top and admire the view. Fred Watson

has joined us. Thank you. Good to be here. If we talk about data, you

played a key role in pioneering? Apparently I did. A long time ago.

You have an image. I put it up on the screen. It is a galaxy. If you

look at it carefully there are two rings a vertical ring and a

horizontal ring. The fibres let you look at the light individually from

the different parts of the galaxy. When you do that, you see, for

example, this. Red means that that part of the galaxy is moving away

from us and blue means it's moving towards us. Those are the stars in

the galaxy. If we look at the horizontal axis it's different.

Something is spinning the other way. That's the dust. The dust is going

away from us and towards us. That galaxy is interesting. The dust is

going one way, like that, the stars are spinning that way like that.

Why? Well, can you imagine what it would be like like on a planet of a

star in that galaxy seeing two Milky Way's one dusty and one starry they

have experienced a collision, probably a smaller galaxy gobbled up

by it. It has its axis perpendicular to the the galax. Like Omega

Centauri? It might be the remnants of a galaxy. Will one motion win

out? Is Probably. They form a shell around the galaxy. There will be

still a disc though which will be recognisable perhaps to inhabitants

in that galaxy as a Milky Way. We have seen these images of galaxy and

see them as still photographs. The technique that you use here spreads

out the light? That is right. And dynamic objects instead. We get more

information than a photograph. We take the light away to break the

light into rainbow colours. It tells you the intimate details of stars

and galaxies and their motion. It's a living dynamic thing the galaxy.

That is right. You have been here for a while. A long time. Decades.

Indeed I have been working in that telescope dome for so many years

I've started to look at it! I don't know what your excuse is Dara, you

have only been here three days. He had a full head of hair. We are only

six hours away? It's a shrine to science on the top of a mountain in

a prime evil landscape. The fact we have a concentration of a group of

scientists, engineers, technicians and administrative staff at the top

of their game, basically, producing science of the very highest quality

in a landscape that is really very primitive. It's a vocation. What was

it for you that sparked the passion? I was brought up in the Apollo era I

was inspired by all of those exploits by those spacemen all those

years ago. Interesting you mentioned the Apollo era if it wasn't for the

contribution of Australian astronomers. Apollo 13 may have

ended very differently. Threes three Australian engineers

began what seemed an ordinary day at work. Worried. They were about to

become key players in one of the most infamous days in the history of

space flight. As Apollo 13 rocketed towards the Moon NASA tracked its

process via radio dishes dotted around the globe. One of them was

Honeysuckle Creek. We were monitoring the perimeters on the

spacecraft itself and what was happening. Two-days into the

mission, an oxygen tank exploded with enough force to destroy a small

house. We have had a problem here. The The Apollo sp spacecraft had a

serious power supply malfunction. The crew's only chance of survival

was to leave the main spacecraft and climb into the lunar lander, now

their lifeboat. Everybody keep cool. Mission Control needed to gang them

on the perilous journey back to earth. The explosion had damaged the

spacecraft's main antennae. Left with the lunar module tiny antennae

they could only send feeble signals. It was Hamish's job to pick them up.

To stand a chance he needed a bigger radio dish. Fortunately, perched on

a rooftop 180 miles away in Parkes was the biggest dish in Australia.

Do you think that is tracking at the moment? I would say so. At that

moment, the dish wasn't set up to talk to spacecraft. It was being

used by some astronomers but they had their own equipment, which is

not suitable for the NASA signal. If we were to help them, then we had to

have time to reconfigure the telescope. But there was no time. A

crack team of NASA engineers was immediately flown into Parkes. One

of them was Bruise Window. I would have been about here and the dish

driver was about there, and the NASA equipment was behind you. We had to

very rapidly reconfigure our system and then look for a signal, which we

managed to get. We did in a way what would normally take a week. Stand

by. OK, go-ahead. Against all the odds, they succeeded. Parkes started

to pick up the signals from the stricken craft. Craft. It wasn't

enough. The astronauts voices were being drowned out under a wall of

noise. We had two signals on the one frequency. It sounded like the

voices were breaking upped and we couldn't make out the words. A rogue

signal was obliterating their words. If we couldn't get a signal or a

message through they would be perished. Maim Hamish came up with a

radical idea. We asked NASA to turn their signal off. Hang in there. It

won't be long. With the ahs row noughts waiting in radio silence,

Hamish began a tense battle to find and filter out the rogue sillingal.

And then... Then the astronauts put the signal on again and we had clean

communications. -- signal. You are doing real good work. So are you

guys. Houston had a signal clear enough to guide the crew all the way

home. APPLAUSE

Houston, it really looks great. Once we saw the par shoots, the relief

was palpable. We knew we'd done our job. Failure was never considered to

be an option -- parachutes. The happiest moment had to be when we

heard they were back. Without Parkes and the Australian radio I think

nears Apollo 13 could have ended very differently. It was quite an

experience. Yes, it was. They truly helped Australia earn its place in

the history of space exploration. It's incredibly her roar ifbg

efforts to communicate back at time. It's much easier to commune case

Tracey said what was the final star we should see. It's Jupiter. Not a

star, very bright in the southern sky. We want you to help us makist

had ril. In the past on this show you found planets, supernova and

mapped the surface of Mars. We have the planets here. We are

looking further away. If the predictions are right, this Planet 9

that people think exists in the outer solar system is up where that

dome is. Where the dome is on the hill. Looking into the furthest

reaches of the solar system where we haven't searched before. How much

further? We are not sure of the details. Between about 200 and 600

times further away from the Sun and that the Earth is. Further

than the voyagers have gone. Maybe ten times as far as Neptune.

Presumably that will be cold. It's a long way out. What else can we

guess? We think we know how massive it is because of how it's predicted.

Less massive than Nep it tune or among than the Earth. It's either a

super Earth or a small Neptune. How do he we know there is something

there? It's a factor the solar system. Out past Pluto there are

plenty of other objects we know about. In purple you can see their

orbits. They are off to one side of the solar system. One way of

explaining that is to have this orange orbit, the supposed orbit of

Planet 9. If you have a giant planet on the other side it polices space.

That's the idea. The proof has to be that we have to go out and find it.

Astronomers over the world are looking for this. It's a hypothesis

accept. It's science. We should test it. It's a great prize. 150 years

since anyone discovered a planet. We will go down in history, or you

will if you find it. Why have professional astronomers not found

it? We want people to go to our website and they will see is an

image from the sky mapper telescope on this site. They carried out the

deepest search of the southern sky. These are images that take us

further, if you like, than we have been before. We have a chance of

seeing what is probably a faint planet. The other question is, why

can't computers do this. Why haven't we put it into a super computer and

got the answer out. People tried that. The place we think the planet

is lurking is towards the centre of the galaxy on the sky. That means

that that region, if you look at these images you see lots of stars.

They are confusing. It's human pattern recognition skills take

over. It's the technique used to find Neptune. That is right. You are

looking for things that move. In these images, sky map comes back to

the same part of the sky a few times during the four years it has been

observing. Wen want people on the website to look for things that

appear to be moving. Something is moving it's in the solar system. It

happens once a century if not more. There is that a consolation prize?

If it's there and it's big and it's reflected we will find it. By not

finding it we learn something. That's the scientists consolation

prize. I'm excited about finding Trojan asteroids that share the

orbits. We've got an artists impression of

what it might look like. Does it have to be gaseous? These are the

most common mass of planets in the galaxy but we don't have one.

Finding one on the borderline between being just big enough to be

gaseous... Is incredibly exciting. All you have to do is go to the BBC

website and follow the link to discover Planet 9. Now, while we've

been here gazing at the stars, one thing thing we've seen a lot of his

shooting stars. If you look at the top right-hand corner, there goes

one right there. We sent Liz out on a mission to catch her own falling

star. Every day, thousands of meteorites

hurtle towards the Earth. That's about 44 tonnes of the stuff. Most

of it burns up in the atmosphere but every now and then some of it makes

it through. Why is the Nullarbor the place where you decided to look for

meteors? Nullarbor is a nice place because it's a big area so you've

got a decent chance some will land. But it's mostly pretty clear of

vegetation. You can see black rocks on the ground. So how do you find

them in the Nullarbor? You've got to pinpoint where it lands. Our project

is to nail that problem. It's no use setting out in the hope of finding a

meteorite by chance. Instead, Phil has a trick up his sleeve. A network

of cameras that watch the skies the shooting stars and fireballs caused

by calling meteors. How does a camera like this tell you where a

meteorite might fall? We've got a bunch of these all over Australia.

They are all seeing the sky from different directions. If you've got

a fireball coming through one sees it from here, one sees it from

there, it pinpoints where it lands. Recently Phil caught this shooting

star on three separate cameras. With these three viewpoints, his team has

been able to calculate it hit the ground less than 20 miles from here.

So the hunt is on. We think it probably started maybe about two

kilos an entry so it's not very big to begin with. According to the

computer model this two kilo meteorite fragmented into small

black pieces of rock, the size of my thumbnail. And they landed somewhere

out here. As we start the search I'm wondering how Phil expects us to

find anything in all this open space. We usually search like this.

We've got a line of people, like a police search when they are looking

for forensic evidence. How do you train your eye to find something

this small in to rain that's difficult? It takes quite a long

time? You're trying to lick of any anomalies, anything that looks a bit

different. -- to look for any anomalies. We search for hours and

find nothing. Eventually we start to lose the light. It's hard to remain

upbeat. All right, we'll call it for today and carry on tomorrow. OK.

It's just after dawn and we are raring to go. OK, ready when you

are. It really is quite tricky to recognise a small meteorite from all

of these ordinary pebbles. And all the kangaroo to. Why is this so

important? What keeps you going? We can work out where it came from

through the cameras. This looks like it's got a really unusual orbit.

Normally when you look at an orbit like that, normally you would say

that's a comet. Have you found a comet yet? No. If we find it what

does that mean to our advancement of our understanding of the solar

system? Comets are the most primitive objects in the solar

system. They have the most pristine record of how planets came together.

So that's a big deal. I'm sold. Despite the heat we've got to keep

looking and find something. If we do find this piece of rock, it could

help fill better understand the conditions that led to the formation

of the solar system, and planet Earth. There are plenty of false

alarms. I'm 99% certain that's not it. I'm a scientist so I never say

100%! And then at midday, LE makes a discovery. I think that's a

meteorite. I think you found one. How do you know? There's a nice

definitive test, it will deflect the compass needle because of the metal

in it. That's incredible! That's the first time I've actually found one I

think! That's amazing! Finally, we may have found a meteorite. It's not

the chunk of comet spotted by Phil's cameras. We know this is an old one

because it's rusty. I think that's just made my day already but we are

going to continue on and hopefully find this to you. Phil's team will

analyse the composition of this potential meteorite when they get it

back to the lab. Meanwhile we continue the search for as long as

possible, until we are out of lights, and out of luck. I think

we've got to call it. It's a shame we didn't get it, but we know that

somewhere within two or three kilometres of this place is a little

chunk of rock that's compromised very strange place in the solar

system. It's out here somewhere, a genuine time capsule from the

beginning of our solar system, still waiting to give up its secrets. Phil

is determined to come back and find it. Whatever the rock turned out to

be, it'll have really big implications for our understanding

of solar system's structure. That's why we've really got to get it. And

here to give us an update on that search further, it is Gretchen from

the team. It's so lovely to have you with us. You test all these

potential meteorites when they are handed to you, what kind of tests do

you carry out? What we are trying to do is figure out what the meteorite

is. The first thing we do is cut it open. What we are looking for is to

see what kind of rock it might be. If it's got a lot of metal flex all

credit and rocky bits as well, we know it's a primitive type of rock

-- metal pieces all through it. That means it hasn't been melted yet and

it's something that tells us about the early solar system history.

There is a test that is like a DNA test the meteorites. Yes, that's

based on using oxygen, because oxygen comes in three forms. Every

rock on Earth has a specific ratio of these three forms of oxygen. So

we know that a rock comes from Earth. When we look at meteorites we

can work out if they are related to each other, we can definitely tell

if they aren't from Earth. So we can work out really quickly what kind of

meteorite it is. Tell us about the comet search. I left the team in

January, what's happened since? There has been another quick search

but they didn't find anything so now we are mounting another expedition

to comb the whole area because we've got to find this rock. Finding a

meteorite would be amazing. I know the team isn't going to give up

until they find it. The Desert Fireball Network has been very

successful in finding meteorites including this one which I'm not

allowed to touch. Tell me where this is from and what it is. This is a

type of primitive rock which comes from an asteroid. We have an orbit

for it as well as having found it in the ground. We have this amazing

image of its streaking through the sky as a fireball. Exactly. When

it's a fireball it's losing a huge amount of maths. When this hit the

top of the atmosphere it was about four times bigger than it is now.

It's incredible, good luck with your comet search. Look at that sunrise

behind us. Our star making its presence felt. That would be a

butterfly? It is, it's landed on my foot. We have a question from a

viewer, if we saw Betelgeuse go supernova for how long? It would

shine as brightly as a full moon for a couple of weeks. Go to the

website, follow the Planet 9 link and search. Over on BBC Four there

is a programme starting about gravity. I'd go out and see Orion

and then watch it! He's a postman Pat tomorrow! Will see you tomorrow

but there may be whether issues. This is a picture from the

International Space Station of Cyclone Debbie making landfall at

the moment on the east coast of the states. -- the east coast of

Australia. It's interesting to see from space. We've had an incredible

evening. Go on the website and find that planet! And have a look at

Orion! Good night and good morning!