Episode 2 Stargazing Live

We've trekked four 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 are going,

the true beauty only comes out when the sun goes down. Because crowning

all this is a glorious night sky. Hello and welcome to the second

night of Stargazing Live Australia with myself and Dara O Briain. Thank

you. You might have noticed we are still inside the iconic

Anglo-Australian Telescope. That's because the weather is bad outside.

We are told it will be beautiful again tomorrow. This is an

impressive room. We are at Siding Spring Observatory, six hours Drive

from Sydney. Technically we are perched on an extinct super volcano.

It is the last mountain. It just flattens out, and then it becomes

the flat Australia that we know for hundreds of miles. Beautiful skies,

not a cloud, especially the views we had last night of the Milky Way. A

collection of stars so numerous we can't even count how many. There is

the view during the day, and then when the night falls, it turns

spectacular. Between the stars and the dust, we cannot tell. Billions

of stars. When you look at images like that, you know you live in a

galaxy. We have also seen Saturn, perfectly oriented towards us. This

is the view from our cameras attached to a 9.5 inch telescope.

You can see that dark band through the rings bisecting them, which is

the Cassini division. Because the planets are closer to us than the

stars, they are often the most spectacular sights in the night sky.

The ancient Greeks called the planets of our solar system

"Wandering stars". Today, after 50 years of space exploration, we have

seen the planets close up in unprecedented detail. That knowledge

fires are imagination as we gaze from Earth at those tiny points of

light in the night sky. From the puck marked surface of mercury and

dents, poisonous atmosphere of Venus to the colossal gas clouds of

Jupiter and the graceful beauty of Saturn. Look up and you are seeing

other worlds, each as unique as our own. Now, last night we talked about

why far the most exciting citizen science project we have ever

started, which is to find the ninth planet in the solar system. So far

we have had over a million hits, so you are doing a very good job. You

have found two objects that just could be something interesting. This

is a picture of one of them. You see that green circle around that point

of light there? Chris Lintott will be here later to explain why we

think that might be something. That isn't all we will be showing you

tonight. Tonight on Stargazing, Greg shows us that even the most familiar

objects in the night sky takes on a fresh appearance when viewed from

here in Australia. Liz finds out how being the fastest continent on earth

could cause major problems for Australia's busiest port. And we ask

if our understanding of the Moon could help protect one of our

planet's greatest treasures. As ever, we want you to send in your

questions either to e-mail or Twitter, and this is a great site we

are in. Let's have a look at the geography. There are 50 telescopes

on this site. That's where we are now, if I circle it, that this

wonderful Anglo-Australian Telescope, the one you are using if

you participate in a planet search that gave us the data here, that is

called sky map. It also found one of the oldest stars known, which was

then imaged by this telescope here. This star was formed over 2 million

years after the Big Bang. It was a wonderful thing because it has been

sat there around 6000 light-years away for around 13.6 billion years.

They are all optical telescopes, but they are doing different jobs.

That's right. This is the UK Schmidt telescope. It has taken some iconic

images. I want to show you of this corona australis, or the Southern

Crown. You can see these very young stars formed in this dust cloud

here. This picture is almost like 3-D, because behind you see the rich

star fields of the Milky Way. We talked about that spectacular

cluster here last night, and that is another one, around 6000 light-years

away. This is almost a romantic image. The great astronomer who took

this will talk tomorrow about how you get these colour pictures of the

sky. Let's look at this mount top here. Last night when we had no

cloud in the beautiful sky, we put Liz Bonnin out here, where it is

very dark and the perfect place to do viewing. It would be unfair to

leave her there tonight. Not really the night for it! Lives, how is the

weather where you are? Basically we are in the soup. This is just a

cloud of mist and fog and cloud and more fog and more missed, and then

about ten minutes ago, the heavens opened and it started lashing it

down. It would not be a good idea to be out on Mount Wooru. Delighted to

be hanging out with you, Greg, albeit under shelter. We had some

lights for you in the background there. But you cannot see them! It

is good to be undercover, but fear not. We have been here for a week

now admiring the night skies, and we have lots to show you. Here is a

stunning shot of Jupiter. It is a really good idea to spend the time

watching its moons. Not just for a couple of seconds, to watch them in

action for several minutes. Last night we watched Europa moving. We

saw the moon 's pass each other. That is what you get with Jupiter.

There is always something going on. So there are four big enough moons

that we observe doing this kind of dance around Jupiter? Yes. This

whole system is edge on for us, so we see those moons appear to go

backwards and forwards. They cast their shadows on Jupiter, so there

is always something going on. There really is, and this is a planet you

can see in the UK right now. 11 times the diameter of the Earth.

That is extraordinary. It is rising in the east and moving across the

South in the UK right now, getting high gear over the horizon, until it

finally sets at around 6am, so plenty of time to observe it after

the programme. And you will probably have better skies then we have. At

1:40am last night, Jupiter was in the perfect position to view the

great red spot. This is what we got last night. Greg, how rare is this

view? Jupiter spins really fast, about once every nine hours and 55

minutes, so to have that great red spot turned to the right place where

we can see it, you have to really plan. Indeed. But we are not seeing

it tonight. Now, if you were to observe the great red spot through a

telescope in the northern hemisphere and then make the equivalent

observation in the southern hemisphere, you would notice

something a bit odd. It is in the wrong kind of place. Lorraine on

Twitter wants to know if everything is upside down to how we see it in

the UK. Greg has made a little film about it. When I was in my 20s, I

headed off on my motorbike to explore Australia. Because I've

always been good at fixing things, I ended up working as a mechanic. I

often had to travel out to remote places to make repairs, and once the

sun went down, I would park up and sleep under the only roof available,

the magnificent Milky Way. Looking up at our big, bright Australian

night sky completely blew me away. And it made me want to understand

the way it all changed each night, including the one thing that

everyone knows - tonight, we have a beautiful bright moon, and because

it is so close to Earth, it is the easiest thing for us to see, and we

don't need any special equipment. Your own eyes will do just fine. No

prizes for recognising this as the moon, but you bright spot that

something seems not quite right about it. Compare this picture taken

from the UK with my Australian view. You can instantly see that the moon

looks a different shape. The Shadow is on the other side. But that's not

all. Look more closely at the patterns on the surface. The big

dark area on the side of the moon is the Sea of tranquillity, the place

where Apollo 11 landed. So let's compare the view we have

tonight with the one you have in the UK. The Sea of tranquillity has

jumped to the right-hand side. That's because the moon you see is

the other way up from ours. So how is that? Everyone on earth is seeing

the same moon at the same time. We see it a different way up because we

are a different way up. I'm going to use my motorcycle helmet here to

represent the Earth. I'm going to use this little camera to represent

you sitting on top of the Earth. If you imagine that my face is the

moon, the view from this camera shows how you would see it from the

UK, the right way up. And if we travel from the UK to Australia, we

are going to go around the curve of the Earth, until maybe I look a

little different. So going around to the other side of the earth means

that we see things in a different way, because one of us is upside

down. And I'm not sure if it's you or me! Our opposite views of the

moon turns its monthly phases on their head also Mac. We seem the

same phase on the moon from anywhere on earth at the same time, but the

way we see that moon depends on which way up we are. Viewed from

Australia, this crescent moon looks like the letter C. But you in the

UK, it looks more a capital D. Just as we see the moon from a different

angle depending on where we are on the planet, it is the same with the

constellations in the sky. Tonight we have the magnificent RIM the

hunter pretty much overhead. You can see that it looks a little bit

different in our Australian skies than it does from the UK. In the UK,

Orion is seen as a hunter standing up, holding a bow and arrow with a

dagger hanging down from his famous belt. Here in Australia, Orion is

quite the Acrobat. He looks like he is standing on his head. And we know

his dagger as a saucepan, adorned with a fantastic Orion nebula, a

cloud of dust and gas where stars are born. I love watching the stars.

Whichever the hemisphere you are watching the night sky from,

observing the differences is always an adventure. I'm calling it. Greg

is the most Australian person you could possibly have found to do

that! Someone said he was either God or a member of ZZ Top! Or Gandalf.

Orion is interesting because it can be seen from both hemispheres, and

will be very similar to you in the UK. And how can we illustrate this?

We have a series of photographers all the way down the globe from the

UK to Australia to take a photograph of Orion at the same effective time

every night, so when it is about 15 degrees above the horizon, so you

are not seeing the rotation due to the rotation of the Earth, you are

seeing it in the same place but you can move down. We started with the

UK and then we travelled down. All you should see is the change of

Orion because of being in a different position. We can see it

first from the UK, so lets see it again. This is the familiar sight of

Orion. You can see Betelgeuse, the red giant at the top left, and the

lines of the stars of the belt. And we can run through the photographs

and just watch the belt as it tilts to the south coast. France, Abu

Dhabi, India, and now it has gone all the way up to the Philippines.

Jakarta, Brisbane. By this point, the belt, which had lain parallel to

the horizon, has now tilted 90 degrees. Can we see that again? It

is a beautiful thing to have done. There we go, from the Shetlands, and

then write all the way down, and you can see that as you drop down

towards the equator, cross the equator, or Ryan rotates

beautifully. I should say, as Greg said, it is actually asked to ring

the rotation. Brisbane is -30 degrees latitude, and Shetland is

about 60, which is what you get that 90 degrees change. 90 degrees from

that to that. Lovely. The stars in the sky are not the only things on

the move. In Australia, the ground under our feet is shifting faster

than anywhere else on the planet. Liz has been to investigate. 2/18

century explorers, the search for the fabled southern continent was

reliant on the starts to point the way. -- to 18th-century explorers.

Today, thanks to a vast network of artificial satellites, we know every

inch of Australia. And I can tell precisely where I am. Port headland

on the north-west coast. The most well-known navigation satellite

system is the American one, GPS, which stands for global positioning

system. This extraordinary feat of engineering has completely

revolutionised how we navigate. Most of us will have sat nav on our phone

or in our cards, but nowhere is GPS more vital than a place like this.

Bought Hedland is one of the most busy ports in the world and an

important link for the mining industry here. Each year, thousands

of cargo ships come here to load up with 200,000lb of iron ore. From the

automated vehicles that load cargo to the ships themselves, virtually

everything that you see here lies on pinpoint accuracy, provided by GPS.

But there is a bit of a problem here because Australia has moved. Every

continent on earth is moving. It's called Continental drift. A gradual

shifting of the plates that make up the crust of our planet. But the

plates that Australia sits on is moving the fastest. And the problem

is, the satellite systems that we rely on to tell us where everything

is do not keep up. Australia is shifting seven centimetres closer to

Asia every year. It has had to update its GPS data three times in

the last 50 years. And since the last time, in 1994, it has drifted

another 1.6 metres. And that is a big deal if you are in a driverless

car or navigating one of these giants down a narrow 27 mile

channel. That is Marine pilot Mark Ayres' job. He has flown out by

helicopter to board the incoming ships and help steer them down this

tricky waterway. I have hitched a ride to see what he is up against.

This vessel is in the narrowest part of the channel. The ships are up to

60 metres wide. Mark is one of just a handful of pilots with the skills

to navigate one of the most difficult ports in the world. Other

reports have bigger tides, stronger currents, narrower channels, tighter

corners, and even bigger ships, but bought Hedland has all of those

together. It makes it a very difficult job. Loaded ships can only

leave the port during high tide. Even then, they can have just 25

centimetres between them and the sea floor. If Mark can keep them bang in

the middle of the channel. That is where GPS comes in. Knowing the

absolute position of the vessel allows us to remain as close as we

can to the middle of the channel. We have accuracies of down to about a

metre. That is for our day-to-day operations. Does the job of get

boring? Is every ship you go on another real challenge? Don't tell

anybody but this is the best job in the world. Boys toys to an extreme.

With up to eight ships today carrying over ?20 billion worth of

cargo year, Mark asked to use equipment that constantly corrects

his position by 1.6 metres. But this year, Australia is updating its

satellite data again. So we'll pilots like Mark still needs to

correct their GPS systems? For a while, yes. Because this time, GPS

will not just catch up with the world's facets continent, it is

going to overtake it. This year, Australia is being moved. GPS users

will receive new court lets for the continent which correct for the

existing 1.6 metre shift, but also the data will be over corrected, or

future proofed. The new court and it will be based on where Australia

will be in 2020. For a few more years, Australia will still be in

the wrong place. Though my just 20 centimetres to start with. And

getting less each year. The hope is that by the time Australia is back

in the right place again, new satellite technology will be able to

track the continent's drift in real-time for ever. Putting

satellites into space is one of humankind's greatest achievements,

allowing us to interact with this planet in a completely different

way. But our drifting continents are also a reminder that this is a

dynamic, ever-changing world that we will never be entirely under control

of. Welcome back to the wet soup of

where we are. We're sitting under one of the spiral arms of the

cyclone hit in the east coast of Australia. I'm sure you have heard

about it. She has not given up yet. She is making us know all about. She

has got a legacy, for sure. Greg, you have had a branch of questions

coming in. Just you. You know they love you, you are a big hit. You are

officially either telescope Gandalf or Merlin. Take your pick. That's

beautiful. Can oppose a couple of questions? Steve on Twitter wants to

know, how do you navigate and see in the southern hemisphere? Good

question. In the northern hemisphere we have the polestar, which makes it

very easy to find true North, but in the south it is more complicated. It

is. In the north there is a star that indicates that point but there

is no such that in the south. We have to resort to a bit of

creativity to find their place in the sky. So talk us through it,

using this fantastic objection of the night sky. -- fantastic

projection. What stars will be used to find true south? We will use the

Southern Cross, which we were familiar with last night. Alpha,

beta, gamma, Delta and Epsilon. And we will use our pointers are alpha

century and beta Centauri. -- our pointers stars. And if we draw a

line through the axis of the Southern Cross, it will go somewhere

like that. And if we draw another line down the middle, we could get

technical and call that a particular by sector. We could, but we're not

going to. Where these lines intersect, that is the south

celestial pole. And that is how you find south. Very nice. Thank you for

that question, Steve. Justin wants to know, are any planets eager to

see in the southern hemisphere? Not really. All of the planets can be

seen, five can be seen from everywhere, from both hemispheres,

but certainly the closer you are to the tropics, the higher the planets

can be in the sky, so things like mercury, which is particularly

difficult to see in Britain, even in southern Australia, where I am in

the wild regions of Western Australia, we get mercury quite

well. Lindsey from Brighton monster now, is there an equivalent to the

Northern lights in the southern hemisphere. Absolutely. There is the

borealis and the Aurora Boruc -- Aurora Australia Alice. And we have

a beautiful photograph of it, look at that. We have to go a long way to

see it. Thank you for your questions. Since we arrived here in

Australia, we have looked at what the night sky is meant to indigenous

Australians for thousands of years. When you look at the Milky Way, you

can see a set of distinctive dark patches running across it. It might

look like unoccupied space but these are actually nebulae, fast clouds of

gas and dust that scatter the starlight. To indigenous

Australians, they call it the... The new. -- the emu. Spiritually, the

spirit he knew is very important because it is a sacred spirit that

relates to water. It lives up there in the Milky Way. You see it during

the winter periods in the southern hemisphere, from April right through

to August and when it leaves the sky, it comes down to the earth and

it either travels in the water as a water spirit or travels on the land

and when it travels on the land in its physical form, that is the black

emu that our old people tell you never to interfere with because he

is checking out what holes. The emu plays an important part in our

culture. Shaun Murphy has tweeted this

question. Based on something you said a few minutes ago. If star ten

CPAC -- ten CPAC is over eight billion years old, why hasn't not

burnt out? There is more force trying to squash them down and they

have to burn more fuel because it is larger. A small star, smaller than

the Sun, will last about 10 billion years, and it is about 5 billion

years old, her son, red dwarfs will last for 100 billion years, and they

will burn their fuel more slowly because they are small. We have this

question from here on in Scotland. This is a beautiful photograph, the

Whirlpool galaxy. What I want to know -- what I love about this, you

can see galaxies interacting. We talked about how galaxies are not

static things. They interact and changing shift. What you are seeing

here is a galaxy interacting with another small galaxy. Lanes of dust

and stars, being ripped out of the galaxy and merging with the gravity

of the other one. A beautiful photograph. I want to talk about

Saturn. We have seen many spectacular views of Saturn over the

last few nights. This is clearly not a view of Saturn, but it is from --

not a view of Saturn from a telescope but from the Cassini

spacecraft. I want to draw your attention to the North Pole, and the

rings. The rings tell us something about our search for Exel planets.

The question is, what causes the structure in the rings. -- our

search for ten CPAC. That is the Cassini division, this dark gap.

Historically, Cassini may be the first person to have nothing named

after him. It is a gap where there is no debris. Historically, it is

very small. If you look at Saturn, you will see this with a small

telescope and the question is why. Is there something that comes

through to push it out? It is to do with this, the Death Star moon,

Midas. This is in orbit, a long way away, outside the wings. But there

is a phenomenon called orbital resonance. Imagine a particle, a

little piece of ice orbiting around inside the Cassini division. It is

position such as that it would go around twice for every single orbit

of Midas on the outside. That means that they are constantly meeting up

Mark and Midas's gravity is kicking them out of the gap. But what does

that have to do with our planet? Remember last night, searching for

Planet 9. The evidence, the suggestion that we have that there

may be something there is the fact that all of these orbits, smaller

objects in the outer solar system, you are clustered in this region.

There are none of them over here. That is like the Cassini division.

What is the expiration? Well, just like Mimas, we suggest there is

something orbiting here that is kicking everything else out. The

orbit is position such as it doesn't take these out.

Going back to Saturn again, if all we had to work from was that gap, we

could tell that there was an almost seeing moon. Yes, we could infer the

presence of my mass by looking at the Cassini division alone. It's

beautiful. It is the gravitational field is caused by the 60 odd moons

of Saturn. This is a close-up of the rings taken by Pazzini. All of these

are to do with the moons and the resonances. These stunning images

are all due to the probe called Pazzini, the only spacecraft to have

orbited Saturn. -- Pazzini. On October 15, 1997, the space probe

Cassini blasted off into space. Its destination was the most beautiful

planet in the solar system, Saturn. The probe reached the ringed planet

in 2004, and ever since has been sending back a stream of what must

be amongst the most spectacular images in the history of space

exploration, from details of the surface... To images of Saturn's

many moons. But, of course, it is the planet's brings that are the

show stoppers. Sadly, Pazzini's mission ends in September, when the

probe will be intentionally crashed into the planet's atmosphere, but

the mission will be taking images and data all the way down for our

closest look yet at the ringed planet. And we have had a question,

could you send a probe through the rings? Yes, you can, and we are

going to do it. You see that Cassini is going to fly in between the

planet and the rings. It is going to do it 20 odd times. You would never

do that with the new spacecraft, but because Cassini is coming to the end

of its mission, it is going to explore the environment in between

the rings and the surface of Saturn. And there is a good reason why

Cassini is ending its mission by crashing into the planet. Yes, if

you left it there, there was a chance it could crash onto the moon,

such as Titan. It has liquid water below the surface, so there is a

chance in their that there was an environment that could support life,

so we do not want to contaminate it. I don't suppose there is much chance

of anything in view in the skies are right now outside, but let's ask the

lives what's going on out there. Eat your heart out. Our floor manager

says this is a bushmaster. You can see that it is raining behind me and

we can't see anything. Last night it was beautiful here, and Greg showed

me another beautiful site in the southern night sky. Greg, I have

seen these once before in South Africa, but it wasn't quite as

magnificent night as this one. Tell me what these Magellanics clouds

are. These two galaxies is what they are. This large Magellanics Cloud is

a galaxy around 160,000 light-years away. And the small Magellanics

Cloud is another galaxy, and that is why one appears bigger than the

other because one is closer than the other. They are pretty much the same

size. They are dwarf galaxies, about 10% of the size of the Milky Way.

These have got perhaps around 20,000 million stars each. So that is why

you have the large Magellanic and the small Magellanic. They look like

they are broken off bits of our Milky Way, but they are galaxies in

their own right. They look a bit like fuzzy clouds, so I understand

why they are called cloud as well. It is funny you should say that. In

Western Australia, I have occasionally had someone come out

and say to me, what a pity it is cloudy tonight. And I had trouble

understanding what they meant. They think that they are securing the

view, but in fact, that is what they should be looking at. We are looking

at too distant galaxy hears with the naked eye. Just incredible. Even

though they are separate to our own home galaxy, they are connected to

the Milky Way. They are. There are streamers of material connecting

them, charged particles, protons, electrons, that are interacting

between those two galaxies. There is communication going on, not only

between each other, but they are connected to the Milky Way in the

same way. On a night like this I could stand here forever. They are

just spectacular. Absolutely. This is why I do this, because it blows

me away every time. Just to consider what we are looking at here, how far

away it is, and just trying to absorb that into our being, it is

just so powerful. Cyclone Debbie is really giving it whirly. I am trying

to shelter them off from the rain. Those charged particles are

signposts to what over millions of years will eventually happen to

those Magellanic clouds. The Milky Way has been eating up dwarf

galaxies, and it is thought that the two Magellanic clouds will have the

same fate. Discoveries about the night sky are being made all the

time, and as well how it can affect what happens here on Earth. It is

hoped that another recent discovery could help safeguard the future of

one of our planet's greatest treasures.

Australia's Great Barrier Reef is pretty much the biggest living thing

on the planet. You really can see it from space.

But looking at those corals close up is even better. A community has been

living and surviving out here from the last -- for a very long time,

and every year it puts on a spectacle. Every year, the coral

species reproduce. It is the largest synchronised breeding in the world,

and we are still trying to work out how it is synchronised. One thing

seems to be the water reaching just the right temperature. And something

else that is even more important is a mysterious relationship between

the coral and what is familiar to all of us in the night sky - the

moon. Each coral species breeds at a slightly different time, but the

biggest mass spawning is always seem to follow a full moon. And for a

long time, no one could work out how coral knew when that was. So

scientists look to see if Moonlight was a factor, and they discovered

something incredible. Despite having no obvious eyes, coral can see.

There are not in the way that we do. Coral can detect light, and they use

that ability to become expert astronomers. It is the changing

brightness of the moon that accuse them to spawn. But this isn't just a

fascinating revelation. It could also give biologists a tool to help

the reef's survival. Last year, a quarter of the coral was wiped out.

Climate change is believed to be one of the main reasons. If the Great

Barrier Reef continues to be impacted by rising sea temperatures,

we could lose one of the most diverse ecosystems on the planet.

So, at the Australian Institute of Marine science, the battle is on to

help save the reef. They are building a mini version of the Great

Barrier Reef inside these tanks, complete with tropical fish and,

incredibly, indoor moons. It is all part of an experiment being run by

Doctor Greg told us. Good to meet you. To find out how climate change

affects coral. These are very sensitive animals. They react

dramatically to very small changes in their environment. The best way

to do research like this is to trigger the coral to spawn in doors.

And they are having remarkable success. Last year, 5 million last

they were produced here. Thanks to these artificial moons. These lights

are specifically designed to mimic the natural light conditions that

this coral will experience out on the reef, Moonlight and sunlight.

They are computer-controlled, and they mimic the changes in light

intensity as well as the colour of the light. That's very clever. Using

these lights, Greg can recreate the different phases of the moon. Not

every species is triggered by a full moon. This little guy takes its cue

from a new moon, reproducing a few nights later. Greg Andy his team

simulated a new moon five nights ago, and now we are back to see if

it worked. Under red lights that will not confuse the coral, we are

looking for signs of reproduction. Greg, what am I looking for. We are

waiting for some la fete to pop up from the coral. We don't exactly

know which part they will come out from. It is a waiting game now.

There was actually something coming out now. This is actually the first

time that I see the polyps releasing larvae. This is the first time this

species have ever been filled producing larvae in captivity. There

is one in the middle and one just there. That was cool. Having

successfully triggered the coral to reproduce, Greg can now run

experiments to find out how they cope with climate change. It is

still early days, but eventually this research could be used to breed

a new variety of coral which could even help re-colonise one of the

world's greatest treasures. And it is all thanks to harnessing the

power of our brilliant moon. Well, we are in doors now. We would love

to show you the door like we did yesterday. It is 6:42am now at

siding Springs. We are joined by Fred Watson who has been here for

how long... 35 years. What I love about this telescope is that it has

been here so long it has generated its own set of astronomical legends.

My favourite one is the legend of Gascoigne's Leap. Ben Gascoigne, a

prominent astronomer, was one of the commissioning astronomers of this

telescope. On one of the first night he was observing, he went out on the

outside walkway, came back into the wrong door, hopped over the fence

and he thought he was going to land on solid ground, but he felt

something like five metres. We very nicely put a plaque up for him. And

he survived. He hurt his elbow. It is a remarkable thing. We celebrate

that. Ben was very much loved in astronomy. Over your years as an

astronomer, you chose for us and some of your favourite astronomical

sites in the sky. Look at that. Baade's Window. I was observing the

centre of our galaxy with this telescope back in the 70s and early

80s, and at that time, the only where you could penetrate the middle

of our galaxy was by finding tunnels in the dust that lies between

ourselves and the galactic centre. Baade was a German American

astronomer who discovered one of these tunnels in the 1940s, and it

gave us a route into understanding the stars in the centre of our

galaxy. Now you can do it with infrared, but in those days we had

to do it with Baade's Window. And there is my favourite constellation.

Scorpio. We are missing the bottom bit.

Antares means arrival of Mars. And indeed it is in a place in the sky

where Myers often is. You could confuse it with the red planet but

in reality it is a huge red supergiant, much bigger. How much

bigger than the sum? 883 times. An unimaginable number in some ways. If

this was Antares, our son would be tiny. We have a graphic of it, to

give you a sense of scale. There is the sun. Mars' orbit would fit

inside it. Amazing stuff. And then this last picture. A cluster

romantic lead named NGC6791, they do not come any finer than that. It has

a transparency that allows you to see through the stars, to distance

is way beyond. There is a galaxy there in the background. It is

stunning stuff. Beautiful, thanks. Of course, not everyone using these

telescopes are right here. Some of them are operating all over the

planets, including back at home. Amongst the spectacular giant domes

of this observatory there are many surprises. This is one of the best.

The building is packed full of professional telescopes that are

connected to the internet. And because the whole system is online,

anyone around the world can log on and get the chance to become an

astral photographer. As the sun sets, the roof of the building

automatically rolls back. This facility gives stargazers in the

northern hemisphere a chance to observe the Southern stars, and it

provides access to pristine dark skies for those of us who live in

urban areas where light pollution is a problem. One of the most light

polluted areas in the UK is Wakefield in west Yorkshire. And I

have a group of budding stargazers who are going to try out the

telescopes. Hi girls, how are you. I had to show you where I am before I

start to talk to you. Can you see this? Roof opened up a couple of

moments ago. Isn't that the coolest thing? So have you decided which

object you are going to try to photograph for us? Can we have a

look at the aforesaid nebula and the Orion nebula? Started with aforesaid

nebula. All very cool. -- the Horsehead Nebula. I am so excited by

this, girls. I think this will inspire a lot of people to follow

what you're doing. Thanks a million. The Horsehead Nebula is a giant

cloud of dust and gas near the consolation of Orellana. It was

discovered by the great female astronomer Williamina Fleming.

Perhaps this challenge will kick-start our team on their own

journeys to become great astronomers. And take a look at what

the girls achieved. They went for all three of the nebulae that they

mentioned in that film, the Brian nebula, the aforesaid nebula and the

tarantula. Just amazing. -- the Horsehead Nebula. Let's take a

closer look at the Horsehead Nebula. Through a telescope, you would not

even be able to see this. The detail is really good. It is an object that

does not come up well visually. Photographically, it comes up

beautifully. We have all of that ionised gas in the background. That

is a dark nebula superimposed. Incredible. And it is called the

Horsehead because the top that looks remarkably like a horse's aired. It

looks a little bit like there is a hole cut into the nebula behind but

it is the other way around. That dark mass is a region filled with

dust and gas undergoing active star formation. And the horsehead shape

is actually sculpted by the intense radiation of the stars around it. So

how do you think the girls have done? That is absolutely beautiful.

Stunning, it really is. And isn't it amazing that the technology is there

for us all to be able to do this now, to get online? I certainly

will. We will be back tomorrow with more spectacular sights from the

southern skies. It will be great. We want stars! Greg, if you are still

listening, Giles on Twitter says that Greg is the Australian

Professor Brian Cox and I would not be surprised if he was the keyboard

player in Men At Work. I give the keyboard player in Men At Work? I

can't hear anything. -- are you the keyboard player. Are the rings of

Saturn a permanent feature will be eventually disappear? There are two

answer to that. They might be or they might not be. One theory is

that because they are very young, they are very bright, and so maybe

they have been newly formed and are not covered in dust yet. The

alternative is that the structure inside them is very complicated

which would take a long time to evolve and the bright because of the

ice, and the ice keeps bumping into each other, and it is self cleaning.

It is actually an area of scientific debate. OK. We assume remote

telescopes but soon almost all SpaceX narration may be done by

remote control. Meet Valkyrie, Nasa's new robotic superhero. Behold

as she clutches her iron fist. Gasp as she turns and steers you down. It

no! The guy in the corner controlling every move with a

computer. -- ignore! Because Valkyrie is the astronaut of the

future. The next great landmark in space exploration is putting a human

on Mars but before we walk on Mars, she walks on Mars. And before she

does that, she is currently living in Edinburgh with one of the judges

from Robot Wars. This is Robot Wars! When he is not determining the fate

of amateur robot gladiators, the Professor is breathing light into

Nasa's most advanced robotic astronaut. Valkyrie or her robots

descendants will prepare habitats on Mars for human visitors. Travel to

Mars is a different challenge than going to the moon. It is much

farther away, and so you cannot be seen, the robot is going to be

falling over so we have to do a corrective action. It has to to fend

for itself. While she is cutting-edge hardware, Nasa did not

differ much of the brain. This laboratory is one of three in the

world giving her intelligence. And they are starting with the basics.

You and me, we take walking and locomotion, manipulation, for

granted. But getting a robot to do that is a hard job. Where is it now?

Is it beyond that phase? I think it is maybe three or 490 years old. It

can walk, it can recognise things. And manipulation is still a very

hard robotic problem. -- and manipulation. So let's see what this

4-year-old can do. We're going to challenge her to take the precious

empty box from me and pass it over. Virtual Valkyrie can do it but can

the metallic one? How are you? I have a box for you. At the moment,

it is using its sensors to figure out where the boxes. Your microwave

can look down! -- it can look down. But hang on, Valkyrie was supposed

to turn towards the camera. Why are you turning the wrong way? Look at

me when I'm talking to you. That was human error. I was blaming you but

that was not new at all. You can only do what we tell you to do. We

let her have another go. That has gone slack, so it is under its own

weight. It is a safety mechanism. It is balancing on its own. To be

honest, I could have given you the box and this time. Although the

movement look straightforward, when it lists all of its legs up, it has

to make sure that the force, the weight, the dynamics are in sync so

it does not topple over. So these small steps are giant leaps for

robot kind. But there is room for improvement and today, she is

learning from a real master. Me. If you could put this hat on. Alas,

dignified step of this costume. They recovered meat -- covered me in

reflective markers to take in every detail of my walking. And now they

can feed this information to Valkyrie. I am now going to tell you

something but I will not tell you what. A little burst of speed. There

you go. Valkyrie has been taught to react to changing terrain in exactly

the same way as we do. You have done a brilliant job, having not falling

over. Humans have been walking upright for a few million years, so

by copying us, she stands a good chance of staying upright, too. We

really want to learn the principles of human gait but not necessarily

that kind of one. Is this helping the science? Of course, of course. I

feel that my contribution has given Valkyrie a little bit more flair.

Let's hope that will help her with the complex task she must master

next. Once she has conquered the stairs, she will be learning to

drive, and how to assemble buildings. Ultimately, she or her

robotic descendants will be ready to take the first steps on another

planet. An emotional day for father, even if it is not for daughter. I

think it will almost be as good as getting your child to take its first

steps, almost. The weather here has put the kibosh on any astronomy that

we could do but you back in the UK, our army of volunteer astronomers

have done fantastic work. It is going to continue around the work.

We are here with Professor Cliff lift off. We have had 2 million

classifications in the last 24 hours so thank you to Stargazing Live

viewers. To remind you, what we're looking for is this planet in the

outer solar system to find that, we look for things that move. That is

what we have been doing. We have one of the possible, not candidates yet,

but... Objects of interest. If you look, that is a green symbol, and

there was one a few days later. Most of the field does not move but that

one object has and that is not in our catalogues. There is definitely

something there but we now have to look at it. The next thing is we

have to check it is not in our catalogues, work a fast it is moving

and from that we can get a sense of where it might be now and what its

orbit is. And the most exciting of those candidates, and we have quite

a few of them, we'll go and look at the telescopes. The only problem is

it is cloudy outside. We were hoping to have more data tonight, so as a

back-up, we have called our friends in Chile and it is just about

getting dark there now. We hope they will be observing some of our

candidates. So we will see that tomorrow. We know it is clear in

Chile, and it is going to be clear here as well. Let's hope so. We have

put more data in because so impressed with the result of that if

people go to our website now, they will get a chance to see a fresh bit

of the sky. So tomorrow night, really going to focus on this

because we will have the results and hopefully we will have photographs

big telescopes. So go to our website and continue the search. Tomorrow is

our final show from Australia, the weather will be glorious and will be

a fabulous sky above us. So we will look forward to seeing then. For

more spectacular views of the night sky. But for now, it is good morning

for us, and also to yourselves. Keep looking to that planet -- for that

planet. Good night.