Episode 3 Stargazing Live

We have tracked four hours into the Australian bush. -- been tracking

for hours. In search of some of the most beautiful sights the planet has

to offer. We have come to a place of amazing scenery. And unique

wildlife. But where we're going, the true beauty only comes out whenever

the sun goes down. Crowning all of this is a glorious night sky.

Welcome back. It is six o'clock in the morning, this is our home at

Siding Spring Observatory. South-east Australia. Perched on a

mountain is the right thing because although it is not raining, it is

blowing a gale, and these are not the type of clothes I want to

present a television programme with! Come to Australia! Surfing and a

barbecue! We have been mis-sold this trip! This is what the place looked

like earlier today. On the edge of Cyclone Debbie, this was washed

away. We are here and the one good thing about the wind is... It has

blown away all of the clouds, we have a beautiful clear view, look at

that. The Anglo Australian telescope, the Milky Way, Southern

Cross. Plenty more later on. Gary O'Brien asked us to apologise for

his coat. -- Dara O Briain. I had to borrow this! From the University!

Here are some of the creatures we have been sharing the mountain with.

Robert Patterson was very excited to see all of these kangaroos. Did he

say, why are you wasting your time showing kangaroos? He said was a

natural history show being interrupted by astronomy. The

wildlife does that because there are lots of telescopes looking at the

sky and the wildlife doesn't leave them alone, this new consolation is

called the spider! Perhaps you have seen the bird's legs! Visa be

telescopes looking at the sky. And one of the most ancient, beautiful

consolations is the frog's bottom! On the last day we will share more

of the adventures that has taken us across the entire continent.

Tonight, on Stargazing Live... Liz Bonnin asks why ancient rocks in the

outback could help us find signs of life on Mars. If alien civilisations

are out there, we will see why an Australian telescope might be the

first to spot them. We will explore what is happening with the black

hole at the centre of our galaxy. Plus more results from your hunt for

objects in the far reaches of the solar system.

Those planet results are very interesting, we have real science to

talk about, talking about 4 million hits so far, the most number of

views we have ever had in all of the seven series of Stargazing Live.

Carry on. We're in a race against the growing light in Australia,

Sunrise in over one hour, it is about four minutes past six. You can

see my breath. You can send in your questions, this fire was a prop days

ago but not any more! You can send in your photographs through Twitter

or the website, #stargazing and bbc.co.uk/stargazing. The question

we have here... Where does all the matter in black holes absorb go? It

falls into the black hole and stays there but we think black holes

evaporate, this is what Stephen Hawking is famous for, one with

about 100 zeros after it, it will be returned to the universe. Away from

all of these lights, Liz Bonnin is their... What can you see?

It is freezing cold here. We don't care. It is glorious above. It is

magnificent. We are delighted to bring this to you on the last night.

Or resident guide to the southern skies is with me. Look at this

image. The Jewel Box cluster. This is magnificent sight. Where is it?

And what isn't made from? One of my favourites in the sky and in the

Southern Cross. Very close to the Coalsack Nebula? Coalsack is right

over there. How many stars? At least 100, looking at this with

binoculars, 100 different coloured stars, which is why it is called the

Jewel Box, about 8000 light years away. The galactic open star

clusters are like the villages and The Times of the stars and this one

is a little bit bigger than a village, like small-time. Incredibly

colourful. They are beautiful. We have red, which tells us they are

cooler and the hotter ones are white and blue, which sounds

counterintuitive, but if you heat up some iron, it will eventually Go out

hot. Fantastic description. Another beautiful description, one that

Herschel made when he first saw this, he said it was a very

different colour of its constituent stars, which give it the effect of a

superb piece of fancy jewellery. Another feature of the southern

skies I have been looking forward to seeing his the Carina Nebula. Here

is an image from one of the telescopes. It is so bright! And so

big. Just to here, in the sky at the moment, that bright area. It looks

like a lovely, soft, hazy mass. And with the telescope, this image comes

up. This is incredibly rich, it has stars embedded within it, born out

of that nebula, bright nebula, ionised nebula, you can see that any

colour, electrons being knocked off molecules, gas being turned into

plasma. So much going on and this huge nebula contains another one! It

is 7500 light years away but look at this image from the Hubble

telescope. Tell us what is going on. Incredible image. This star is

called Eta Carinae itself and 150 years ago this was the brightest

star in the sky and it had this massive outburst, throwing light

these lobes of material and that has obscured the light. And that is why

it is called the Homunculus nebula. The stars are not fully understood

but there is all of this dust like it, can we leave you with the images

that our telescopes captured of the Carina Nebula. Another amazing sight

in the southern skies. Beautiful. Perfectly placed to receive

transmissions and messages and information that might come from out

there. We have been asking about aliens. One viewer says, how do

scientists look for life on other planets? One way we can go there,

the Viking probe that landed on Mars in the 70s and another way, that is

analysing the light from stars that passes through the atmosphere of the

planets and that allows us to look into the atmosphere and see what it

is made of, look for signs of life like oxygen which is put into

planetary atmospheres in large concentrations by photosynthesis.

People talk about that. There are places in Australia with the idea of

alien life is very seriously indeed. Welcome to Wycliffe Well. Outback

petrol stop. Watering hole. And self-proclaimed UFO capital of

Australia. I was driving to work as usual and it was around about a

quarter past eight in the morning... Doug Moffat is an amateur

astronomer. With a story to tell. I look in the distance and I could see

a black object hanging silently and very still in the sky. I had no

explanation for what this was. He has been investigating UFO

encounters for the past 20 years. Wycliffe Well is, the history of the

UFO goes back to the Second World War, when servicemen based here

repeatedly sought objects they could not explain. During the last 70

years there have been hundreds and hundreds of sightings in this very

remote part of Australia. You might wonder why aliens seem so keen on an

isolated part of the Australian outback. Very interesting questions,

it is so flat. There is no light pollution. There is nowhere for ET

to hide. The likelihood of us confirming extraterrestrials largely

depends on whether science gets on board and streets this subject as a

real science and starts doing some real investigation. Well, there is

good news. The hunt for alien life just got serious. And another remote

part of Australia is in pole position to spot it. It seems like a

waste of stars and planets if we were the only intelligent life in

the universe. Australia is very fortunate in that the centre of the

Milky Way literally goes over the top of this dish every day. The

centre of the Milky Way is most the stars we can see are. And where the

alien life might be. Professor Matthew Bayless is part of a

coordinated global effort to find alien civilisations. And well he

does not think they have made two hours in person, there are reasons

to be optimistic. -- made it to Earth. In 2007 this telescope picked

up a mysterious signal. I could not get a sleep that night, I was so

excited, this thing was so loud and incredibly far away that it must

represent a new phenomena. This intense pulse, later dubbed a fast

radio burst or FRB, was a complete mystery and a complete one-off.

Until six years later, when another ten signals were detected. We know

they are coming from enormous distances away in the universe and

the amount of power they must require is something incompressible

to us. And we thought it was almost theoretically impossible. Impossible

signals prompted impossible explanations. The most radical

theory is that if aliens are using radio waves to propel spaceships

across the galaxy, during the short, intense burst of radiation they used

to propel them, that would generate something that looks a lot like a

FRB. That is a pretty nifty idea. And that we been detecting these

things that baby aliens produced by launching spaceships is pretty cool

stuff. Although Matthew is yet to be convinced by the alien spaceship

theory, and the urgency has taken over the global effort to find alien

life. -- a new urgency. It is time to commit to finding the answer to

the search for life beyond Earth. Steven Hawking has teamed up with

the wealthy Russian entrepreneur in a $100 million project breakthrough

initiative and for the first step, Matthew has kicked off the biggest

search for alien life ever undertaken. This telescope will

search deeper than ever before, 1 million stars in total will be

surveyed for alien transmission. There is going to be a supercomputer

in that tower which will divide the spectrum into a billion radio

stations that were listening to. It is not a guarantee of success but it

is certainly going to be so much better than anything we could

achieve before. No one is more eager for Matthew to find the answers than

Doug Moffat, back in Wycliffe Well. I never saw that object again, I

have never seen anything like that again. To this day, I have not had

any explanation as to what that could be. Given the immensity of the

universe, we are certainly not alone.

I just got a great tweet from Paul Rowland who said, you can almost

hear Brian Cox grinding his tweet during -- grinding his teeth during

the UFO bets. We have a lot of questions on the subject of alien

intelligence. Somewhere in the infinite universe,

if intelligent life is watching, is it more advanced

than Brian and Dara? When we talk about contacting

aliens, you really have to confine yourself to the Milky Way Galaxy. It

is true that there will be civilisations in the 2 trillion

galaxies in the observable universe but they are too far away. I don't

think we will ever contact us civilisation if they exist beyond

our galaxy. Think about the Milky Way, we have been looking at it all

week, 200 billion stars. The evidence is, but many of them have

planets around them and the current estimate is something like 20

billion earthlike planets in the Milky Way Galaxy. That is one in ten

starts that you can see in the sky, a lot of homes for life. If you ask

many astronomers, the answer tends to be that we are optimistic that

there may be civilisations out there and that is why we do the science,

the real signs that we saw in that film, radio telescopes looking for

signals. But if you ask biologists, they point to the fact that on this

planet, we only know of one planet to harbour life and it took 4

billion years from the origin of life to the rise of the

civilisation, our civilisation. A third of the age of the universe. So

that might suggest that whilst life may be common in the form of

microbes, and we look for those on the moons of Jupiter and Saturn, the

idea that it takes so long or did here at least, to go from simple

life complex life and civilisation, suggests that we might be a very

rare phenomena. And therefore I would add that we are a valuable

part of nature indeed, and something worth preserving. And even if we

find microbes on in salad is, let's say, microbial life, would it be

from the same route that we are? I think we have a photograph of in

salad is from the Cassini probe. It is a small moon, about the size of

Wales. -- think we have a photograph of Enceladus. The jets of water ice

erupting from the surface. There is a keno of ice. It strongly suggests

that there is liquid water below the surface and that suggests conditions

that are at least sufficient for life. -- a volcano of ice. So what

would be more remarkable, if we find microbes there, from the same route

of life as we are, that might have been seeded from are? It is an

interesting question. There is the theory of panspermia, which suggests

that material is spread across the solar system, so they could have

been an origin of life off the earth, on Mars or from comments.

Could that have been distributed throughout the solar System? We

would have to go to Enceladus, fly through the jets, see if there is

anything there, and see if the DNA and biochemistry is the same. I have

a question for you. Imagine that we did contact a civilisation with a

radio telescope. What then happens? Is there a protocol. There is and I

have read it. Article 11 of the Treaty on Principles Governing the

Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space,

Including the Moon and Other Bodies. I looked that up. It is quite

interesting because the first four paragraphs are, check your results

and check them again and make sure it is definitely limited. Then there

is a list of numbers to call. What, 0800, premium phone numbers? Yes,

and then you have to call the UN. They let you announce it. And the

final point, do not reply until everyone else has decided what the

reply is, do not reply. I can see that that is sensible for a

transmission but if an alien walks up to you, what did you do? You shun

them. I live in London and on the tube, we're used to this. You do not

talk to them. You Northern types are too friendly. Something you can see

all the time in this part of the world as the Southern Cross and we

have live pictures of it now. It is iconic and it is on the flag of

Australia. But it is enormously significant to indigenous cultures.

As Ghillar Michael Anderson of the Euahlayi explains.

The Southern Cross is an important place for us. It tells us the story

of the pathway to sky camp, or heaven as they call it. It is where

the creator lives. He realised that there were five white cockatoos

sitting up there. And so he told them that this was a good idea. You

stay here now and you will be the point, to show which way home it is.

-- the pointer. Yesterday we mentioned how

Siding Spring Observatory discovered How old is it? It is about 13.6

billion years old. The universe is 13.8 billion years old so this is a

star that forms may be 100 million or 200 million years after the Big

Bang. One of the first stars in the universe. It is visible in the

southern sky and it is very famous. It is between the Magellanic Clouds.

On the photograph, if you draw a line between it, we have put a nice

circular graphic and we can zoom in to take a look. How do we know how

old it is? It is a good question. All we have is light. That is all

astronomers have. But there is a lot of information carried in light. If

you look at the light from a start, you can pass it through a prism,

essentially. It is just like a rainbow. White light goes through a

rainbow and you get all the colours. What you see when you pass starlight

through a prism, you see it is not a continuous rainbow. There are bits

missing. And those bits missing are very specific colours, corresponding

to different chemical elements. I find that this is probably my

favourite thing in science, because it goes from the very tiny to the

very huge. Just to understand that at the smallest of levels, the

elements have a nucleus and they have electrons floating around them

and if you pump energy into the electrons, they jump up and orbit,

absorbing energy, but they will drop back and unit energy. So every

element, because the audits are unique, every element has a unique

colour signature. Yes, which tells you about the structure of the

element. We have a diagram which is a demonstration. This has boron in

it, the element boron. This is strontium. People will see this more

commonly as copper chloride. So we have green, red and yellow or green.

We see the signatures of the elements. This is what we see in

starlight. The thing about the oldest star, 0313, it is a very pure

star. Essentially only hydrogen, helium and a little bit of lithium.

Those elements were made in the Big Bang. The heavier elements,

strontium, iron, carbon, oxygen, the elements out of which we are made,

they are made in the cause of stars. You new generations of stars to take

that primeval helium to incorporate them into other stars, and you see

that in the spectrum of light. If you see a start that does not have

iron or oxygen or carbon or any of the heavier elements, you know it

formed early on. That is how we date stars. And this is different to the

starlight itself looking blue or red? Yes. When you see colours, like

Betelgeuse, if you go out tonight and look at all Ryan, the top

left-hand star in the UK, it is read because it is cool. That is the

temperature of the star. But when you pass the light through a prism,

that is how you see it. It is beautiful. And warm. That is my

strontium fire, my new science-fiction novel. Let's see

what is happening with Liz and Greg. Would you mind throwing a bit of

that flame to me? We don't mind it, even though it is a little bit cold.

We are under this and it is a glorious sight. We have some more

questions for space Gandalf. Do you mind everybody on Twitter calling

you space Gandalf? Are you ready for more questions? Jewels on Twitter

wants to know why we can see consolations like Ryan from both

hemispheres? The answer is that all Ryan sits above the equator. It sits

on the celestial equator, which means that people from both

hemispheres can see it easily. -- like all Ryan. And we have other

consolations further away from that. You might be able to see them from

both. And the closer you get to the polls, the Northern hemisphere will

not get to see the southern hemisphere. -- the closer you get to

the poles. There is a line, depending on where you are on the

planet. You might see the stars in some circle, and in other circles,

you will not. And those are the ones right at the poles. Luke Gregory

wants to know, what do you think is the most beautiful nebula? A great

question. So many choices. What do I pick, there is the Orion nebula, the

tarantula nebula and I think I'm going to pick the Swan Nebula. We

have not spoken about that. It is also known as the all maker nebula.

We have an image of that. -- the omega nebula. It is right above us.

It is obvious when you look at the image why it is called a swan. I am

looking at it now and you can see the body of this one sitting on the

water. That is the white area in this particular image. It is white,

as opposed to the darker nebulas in the Milky Way. Yes. And that is its

head, coming up and around. Thanks for that, Greg. Wonderful to think

that in these star-forming regions are Solar System is being born,

capable of potentially supporting extra terrestrial life. It is

probably the most compelling quest in astronomy and Mars is a top

contender in that search. In 2020, Nasa will launch a mission to send

their next rover to the red planet and for the first time they will be

searching specifically for science and microbial life as well as

habitable conditions from billions of years ago. But for the best

chance to find it, where should the land of the Rover? -- land the

rover. Mars, and endless red desert. In a landscape like this, finding

evidence of ancient life might seem like an impossible challenge, but it

would not be the first time that scientists have done it. In

Australia's remote north-west, there is a region of arid outback that

looks uncannily like the surface of Mars. Even down to its rust red

sand, full of iron ore. It is spectacular. Welcome. Some heat. It

is a mild summer day, about 39. For over 20 years, Professor Martin has

painstakingly searched these desolate hills. It is magnificent.

Looking for evidence of Earth's earliest life. What makes this

region is special? It is just one of these flukes of nature. One of those

magical spots that has just stayed like it was 3.5 billion years ago.

So we can investigate the early Earth like we were there. The rocks

here are a Time Capsule from an age when life was just beginning to get

a foothold on our planet. I will just collect a piece here. I think

this is an exciting place to look for signs of life. But it is not

just life on Earth that Martin is seeking clues to hear in the

Pilbara. The rocks here are the same age as much of the crust on Mars. By

coming here in studying the environments of early Earth, we can

think about the environment is on early Mars and make connections. In

earth, would you find life? Let's go to Mars and look for those same

environments. -- were defined life. 3.5 billions years ago, when life

might first have emerged on Earth, it is thought that Mars had a

similar climate with an atmosphere and liquid water. So there is every

chance that life could have emerged they are in just the same way. And

if it did, Martin thinks that any ancient life he finds here in the

Bilborough could help lead us to it. -- in the Pilbara.

These particular curves? What are you focusing on? There are a variety

of shapes we cannot explain my normal geology processes, this is a

clear hallmark of biology. These are not the remains of animals? These

are called stromatolitess, this is a rock term, a structure in the rock

and they are the apartment buildings of tiny microbes, millions of them,

living together and they make the structures on the rocks, they did

that 3.5 billion years ago and they represent the ancestors for all life

on Earth, these are our great, great, great, great grandmothers and

grandfathers. Everything we know about on life under Earth and the

touchstone for understanding where we might be able to go to search for

life on Mars. When the next Mars Rover lands and begins its mission

in 2021, Martin believes his other signs of life it should be looking

for. That is because the climate changed so quickly on Mars, it is

unlikely that emerging life developed any further. But it still

leaves the question - where should the new Mars Rover focus the search?

Most sites that Nasa has considered our ancient Martian lakes and

shallow river beds. Because the first life on Earth is believed to

have evolved underwater. But last year, Martin discovered something

here in the Pilbarra that challenges that fundamental idea. This is the

area I wanted to show you. You have this massive unit at your knees,

this big swirl, the remnant of a hot spring pool and some of the earliest

life on land in freshwater springs. Where is the evidence of the

stromatolites? In these black, layered rocks, these are

micro-stromatolites. Quite different to the ones before? In early Earth

we had different habitats and in the hot spring setting, different

features. How much of a game changer is this for understanding the

beginnings of life? This area has been studied for 30 years and we

never knew this until the last year but it has huge implications not

only for how life evolved on Earth but also the where to search for

life on Mars. This discovery marks a turning point for the next Mars

mission. Rather than limiting the search to ancient Martian waterways,

Nasa can look on land also. Around ancient hot springs. That black

patch, that is an interesting patch which has got sulphites. Martin

thinks he knows exactly where to go. The spirit Rover has been to a site

already where they find hot spring deposits with textures that look a

little bit lifelike so we are very excited about the chance to go back

there. After decades scarring this barren landscape, Martin's

discoveries could help Nasa choose the best place to send their next

Rover. And could yet make a historic contribution to the search for life

on Mars. Siding Spring is brilliant for bringing colour to the solar

system, the images they took here have never been seen before. This

one of the Horsehead nebula, these are the images I grew up with, the

spectacular images in astronomy books and I am delighted to have

David Mallon here. -- North Star. Several young astronomers came

through and they wanted a photograph taken with you! We are legend, the

first to develop that technique in the 1980s to produce those beautiful

photographs. How did you do it? Thank you for that kind remark. I

did that because the director said he wanted colour pictures to put

this new telescope on the map! But I knew about colour theory and James

clerk Maxwell with his three colour images and we were making three

colour images but not producing the images from them so we took three

plates in red, green and blue light, black plates capturing red, green

and blue and we made positive films and enlarge them onto colour film

using filters and be rebuilt the colour picture that we are taking

great care to get the colour is just right so they were accurate. What

the naked eye would see if it was a million times more sensitive. The

only hand black-and-white film budget came up with these pictures?

Was no colour film that could do this? It was not sensitive enough,

they were rather feeble looking, the colours were not strong and these

colours were very saturated because they are a mission light objects,

like the colours in the demonstration, really strong, and

colour film does not do that well. This beautiful image of the four

different coloured stars, one of your favourites? Fantastic image.

This is a part of the sky and on the right-hand side there a very bright

start, you can see that with the naked eye, this is a Red Giant,

throwing off dust and that is surrounding the star and the star

itself is lighting that up to the dust is reflecting the star's light,

you can see the yellow colour doing that. On the right-hand side, there

is a much hotter star and that is also embedded in dust but the dust

is not reflecting light, it is scattering the light in the same way

the molecules in the atmosphere of the Earth scattered the sunlight,

making the sky blue so that is why that is blue and at the bottom,

there is a very hot start, shining light into this cloud of dust with

hydrogen and that the races in the way you could see from the chemicals

earlier, with the hot ultraviolet light from the start, all of those

colours are there, and in the centre, hiding the stars, there is a

dark cloud, that is a dark nebula, the dust hiding the light of the

stars beyond. Spectacular and beautiful. We have some images that

the viewers have taken. This is Rosette Nebula, from Don Curry. That

is very good, I must say. Narrowband image, probably taken with the light

from the Rosette Nebula, crisp and sharp, very good contrast, taken in

red light but that has been coloured green light the Hubble telescope to

show the detail. Another one, this is solar activity by Alistair

Woodward. They are great. Very nice picture, showing the structures on

the surface of the sun. How should we start? I did my first

astrophotography here, I brought the camera, I could not miss that

opportunity. You were showing me those pictures and you are very good

for the beginner! That is how to start, get the camera, take some

pictures, just try and then get a tripod and take deeper pictures and

you will get interested. Then you buy a telescope. It keeps going up

and up! But then you talk to real astronomers, join a club, amateurs

are using telescopes, and that is the future. Thank you to all of the

photographers and people enjoying parties across the UK in tandem with

this programme. We're moving into dawn in about 30 minutes so how can

we continue to observe when the sun comes up? There is a clever solution

right year. Emerging from this pretty impressive clamshell dome is

a telescope that is part of an 18 strong global network of instruments

and because it is a network it can do things no single telescope can

do. This two meter telescope along with

a handful of smaller ones belong to Eta Carinae Observatory, which

operates from eight sites around the world. -- Las Cumbres Observatory.

And Mark is one of the technicians responsible. What makes the Las

Cumbres network special? With telescopes all over the world we can

track an object 24 hours a day around the globe. The network of

telescopes act as a single instrument, with observations

passing from one site to another in a relay. Each is automated so

keeping them operational requires some serious technology. This is

what I do. OK, just for this telescope? This behind me. Some

parts of his job or a little easier to get your head around. One of my

other jobs is called snow cleaning the mirror. This is liquid CO2.

Would you let to have a go? I trust you. How much does this cost? A few

million. Big mistake! Pulled the trigger. And you have do the

secondary mirror as well. The power is going to my head. Take That,

secondary mirror! I can see why this is called snow cleaning. Because you

telescopes can monitor the night sky around the clock, one of their

specialities is this track objects that move over time. This unique

network can track targets for days, things like space junk and

asteroids, tracking asteroids over long periods allows astronomers to

calculate their exact size and their trajectory, crucial when you want to

find out if one of them might collide with the Earth in the

future. So we asked Las Cumbres Observatory to track an asteroid for

us and here it is. 24 hours in the life of Asteroid Florence, named

after Florence Nightingale, it has travelled 34,000 miles in 24 hours,

travelling in the South easterly direction halfway between Saturn and

the horizon, it measures 2.5 miles across and is classed as a

potentially hazardous asteroid. The more that Las Cumbres tracks

asteroids the more they can define the spin rate and the exact orbit

and we know that Florence will pass close to the Earth on the 1st of

September this year, the closes it has been since 1890 at just over 4

million miles. She does not pose any real threat right now but space is

dynamic and as an asteroid travels past planets and moons it can get

diverted because of gravity and become dangerously close to the

planet, which is why Las Cumbres is so important and why it will keep

very close eye on asteroids like Florence a long time to come.

Asteroid defence is very important. They are a serious threat, there are

two things that might destroy civilisation, one is our own

stupidity like nuclear war and the other one, probably, is a big

asteroid. I want to show this video from Russia, February 2013, this is

an image from a car over 12,000 tonnes asteroid entering the

atmosphere, that exploded with the force of 30 Hiroshima bombs and

fortunately that was very high in the atmosphere, at a different angle

you could have caused significant damage and the Russian Foreign

Affairs Committee chief said on Twitter that instead of fighting on

Earth, people should be creating a joint system of asteroid defence and

I strongly believe that. It is unlikely but at some point we will

be threatened by a big asteroid. If I look up into the heart of the

galactic centre, I am looking into the heart of the galaxy, looking

straight at Super Massive Black Hole 26,000 light years away. But you

cannot see a black hole by definition so how do we know that

they are there? For decades, astronomers believed the only view

we would ever get the black hole would be from the imagination of

film-makers. But modern astronomy has proved them wrong. This image

from the first black hole ever identified shows a glowing jet of

x-ray radiation spewing out as it feasts on a passing star. Evidence

that this is rare. Even so, we believe that Super Massive Black

holes exist at the centre of every galaxy. Including our own. The first

strong evidence that there is a Super Massive Black Hole at the

centre of the Milky Way came from a ten year study of the population of

stars orbiting close to the galactic centre. From the details of these

orbits we can tell that they are orbiting around something that is

very small, very massive and therefore rarely ends. But we cannot

see it. It looks as if there is nothing there. And we can calculate

the mass of this thing, it is around 4 million times the mass of the sun.

It can only be a Super Massive Black Hole. But there is one thing that

seems to be missing from our black hole. There is no sign of any of the

radiation and x-rays you might expect to be emitted from the

vicinity, if there is gas and dust falling into it. That is a bit

disappointing anyway. Far from being the star eating monster of science

fiction, our black hole seems to be rather dormant and peaceful.

that but in 2011, astronomers made a stunning discovery. It appeared that

the sleeping giant was about to awake. During a routine search

through data, astronomers in Munich glimpsed this mysterious object. It

is not very massive, about three times the mass of the Earth,

probably a cloud of gas and dust. But it was heading directly towards

the black hole at the centre of our galaxy. Astronomers speculated as to

what this might look like. They predicted that the cloud would be

pulled apart by the intense gravity of the black hole. Causing x-rays

and gamma rays to spew violently out into space. Everyone with a

telescope big enough got ready to watch the show. There was a lot of

excitement about the cloud falling towards the black hole because that

could be the first time we have ever been able to watch what happens when

a black hole eat something. Doctor Lisa Harvey Smith studies black

holes using the Australia compact telescope array. And this was an

opportunity too good to miss. Events like this that you can watch live

are so extracting in astronomy because usually we watch things that

happened millions of years ago and this is really a once-in-a-lifetime

opportunity for us. As Lisa waited, astronomers run simulations to try

to predict what would happen. Blackhall science had reached fever

pitch. And as the world watched, the gas cloud sailed straight past. --

black hole science. Despite having all these telescopes around the

world and even in space trained on this event, unfortunately we saw

pretty much nothing. That was a puzzle at the time, that of a

disappointment for everyone. Perhaps our Blackhall was not all it was

made out to be. -- perhaps our black hole. But then just as the world

began to turn away, the team from Nasa brought the black hole back

into sharp focus. The Tsvangirai x-ray telescope had been observing

the black hole in the months following the predicted collision.

-- the Chandra telescope. It took the astronomers sometime in two

analyse the data that they published in January 2015 but they saw two

sudden bright bursts of x-rays emanating from the black hole.

Sadly, the timing was out. The astronomers found that they occurred

two months after the gas cloud was predicted to collide. And there is

currently no scientific consensus as to whether they are linked to the

gas cloud or not. However, our black hole may be about to do something

spectacular. There is a really exciting events coming up next year.

There is a very massive star that we know is orbiting around the black

hole. Again, it is a once-in-a-lifetime event. We do not

get to see things passing close to black holes very often. So once

again, the world's telescopes will be focused on a spot 25,000 light

years from Earth. I think our black hole has a lot of secrets yet to

unfold. We will all be watching very closely. Lisa has joined us. Just as

Dawn is beginning to emerge. You excited about this collision? What

is going to happen? The star is pretty big and travelling incredibly

fast. The audit has taken it around in a 15 year cycle, so it goes very

far away from the black hole and then very close. It is approaching

the closest point next year and at that point, it will accelerate to

about 5000 kilometres per second. Think about that for a minute. It is

15 times the mass of the Sun? It is a gigantic star. It is quite easy to

see and measure its orbit. What do we hope to see as the star

approaches the black hole? There are some interesting predictions about

the strong gravitational field in Einstein's theory of general

relativity. This is a theory that describes how gravity works and we

use it throughout physics. As the star gets close, it will start to

interact with the strong gravitational field of the black

hole and then weird stuff starts to happen. A couple of predictions are

that the Starlight will get redder, and we will be able to measure a

slight reddening of the Starlight, which will tell us about the

strength of the gravitational field and about whether Einstein's theory

is really correct. And one of the ridiculous things that will happen,

time will slow down on that star as we watch. It will be really extreme.

Just sitting here on earth, time is going slower for your feet than for

your head. That is in an extreme environment -- and in an extreme

environment like a black hole, it is very marked. You cannot see it with

your eyes at all but the environment around the black hole is very dusty,

it is not cloudy. We look at it through x-ray telescopes and we can

see through all of that stuff. We have some evidence that something

interesting happens to that rather placid black hole five or 6 billion

years ago. I have an image of our Milky Way and this is an artist's

impression of real data. Interestingly, in the band of the

Milky Way, those big lobes, coloured pink, what are they and what do they

tell us about the history of our black hole? They are incredible.

They were discovered in only 2010 and it was an unexpected discovery

because we see these things in other galaxies, very active galaxies that

have black holes eating a lot of material. But we thought our black

hole was very dormant, just hibernating. But in fact these

bubbles had been blown out of the galaxy above and below the galactic

plane and they show that about 6 million years ago our galaxy had a

meal that was about 100,000 times the mass of our sun, so it started

eating a lot of material all at once. And it worked. 6 billion? No,

6 million, very recent. We have just time to show this image, an artist's

impression of what the event Horizon Project might see. This looks like a

black hole. It is incredible. You can see the black hole in the

middle. That is an effect of gravitational lensing, where gravity

smears light. This is the event Horizon telescope, which is expected

to be looking very close to the event horizon of that supermassive

black hole around the end of this year. It is made up of a global

array of different radio telescopes working together. Thank you very

much Lisa. For indigenous Australians, the sun

has a very special significance. Here's Ghillar Michael

Andersen again. She is the one that keeps the fires

burning, and keeps everything warm for the planet and for all nature to

be able to grow. Yhi is the fourth wife of the Creator, the meal

Creator. The equivalent in the Christian world would be lot. Bhiame

is also in love, and she always has been in love with the moon, Bahloo.

Many times she gets very angry, and lets off a massive heat radiation

that we feel on the earth here. That is her anger, her rage at not having

the freedom to be able to go with her lover. Since Tuesday, an army of

Stargazing Live viewers has been hunting for a planet in our solar

system that is thought to be beyond Neptune. What has been found so far,

Chris Lintott? Well, we have not found planet name but we found many

other interesting things. More than 4 million views of images have come

in and it was obvious that we were finding lots of unknown things in

the sky. -- Planet 9. We were looking for moving things but we

found things that we expected. The coloured dots here, that is Chiron,

a large asteroid. This was discovered in the 70s, wasn't it?

Yes, we found that in the outer solar system and then we started

noticing asteroids that had a nasty habit of lining up. We keep finding

images with three asteroids in a straight line. The pictures last

night, that turned out to... It was to make asteroids doing a good

impression of Planet 9. We have candidates for objects that are

unknown? Yes. Finding known things is good because it tells you it is

working, and a pile of unknown things, the next ages to follow-up

telescopes. But the poor weather, rain and wind greeted us. But we

have done science and that is the important thing. And this is the

scientific result. In the centre, the orbit of the outer planets, with

Neptune on the outer edge, and the green bits, those are the areas of

the sky that we can now say there is not a large Planet 9 hiding in. So

that outer ring is Neptune's orbit. It is a long way out. It is not

there. But we can look at the southern hemisphere. We concentrated

on the south because no one had looked there before. Sometimes

science is about saying what we do not know. We know there is not a

large planet there. Either the planet is smaller than expected or

further out. The search continues and we have new data up on our

website. We will be following up on the discoveries were telescopes here

and elsewhere next week. If you're watching, BBC viewers, put on the

sky at or something, as soon as we follow up on those observations, we

will let you know. And we have not entirely ruled out Planet 9. No, we

had a hypothesis and we did not find the planet, but we refine the

hypothesis and keep looking. Let's not get carried away, Dom is

breaking and the telescopes are closing after another night of

stargazing. It is almost the end of our adventure. Here are some of our

favourite moments. Welcome to the second night of stargazing live

Australia. Thank you, Postman Pat's friend. It is very easy to capture

wildlife. Some giant prancing mice, just dancing around. Look, it is a

Bush moth that made friends with my jacket. I have been working in that

big telescope down there for so many years I have started to look like

it. Those of you out during the day, when the night falls, it looks

spectacular. It is a swarm of stars. That is the

head of the union but the neck comes down this way. It is huge! --

although the emu. One of us is upside down and I am not sure if it

is you or me. Greg is the most Australian person we could possibly

have found. Australian Gandolfo. We are really heralding the Dom. --

Australian Gandalf. Greg, it has been a pleasure to have you here.

What has been the highlight? I think working alongside Les, also seeing

Omega Centauri for the first time through a telescope. That was my

highlight. The feeling is mutual, getting to understand the southern

skies with Greg has been a highlight. Say something that is not

great. The excitement in the room when the candidates came in, and no

hunting down the candidates. For me, it was taking photographs, which

people have done. As an amateur, a straightforward shot of the storm. I

love that we have been renamed, space Gandalf, moth lady, Sir Dara

Attenborough. And Postman Pat. It has been a fantastic experience. We

will see you soon. From all here, good morning. And good night.