Episode 3 Stargazing Live

What a week we have had a Jodrell Bank. When we went hunting, we never

thought we would see this. The glorious colours of the Northern

lights. Or the extraordinary event of the sun bursting particles the

waters. All along you have been searching the galaxies and you have

made a remarkable discoveries, and you've had a glimpse of event that

happened 11 million years ago. I am Brian Cox, he is Dara O'Briain, and

this is Stargazing Live. Welcome back to Stargazing Live.

Let's get straight onto the most exciting news of the series - an

amazing discovery made by you over the last three nights. We asked you

to search for hidden galaxies. And not only have you been successful

but what you've discovered is of genuine scientific importance. So

much so that some of the biggest telescopes around the world,

including this one, have dropped everything to focus on what you've

found. This is why it is pointing in this direction, it is tracking one

of the things you found because it is so interesting. Here to tell us

more is Chris Lintott. What did our viewers need to do? We asked people

to look for gravitational lenses, the light where it has been bent by

more nearby galaxies, and that bending of light means we see

further into the past and we see distant galaxies we would not be

able to see. You said you were hoping to get 500,000 hits by

Thursday. We broke that easily, so now we are at 6.5 million

classification is made by 50,000 Stargazing Live viewers. Such a big

response that the professional community have got involved. It's

not only the Lovell we have taken over. It's not just the quantity or

the classifications, it's they found wonderful things. We have more 50

candidate gravitational lenses, and we've used some of the biggest

telescopes in the world. A genuinely global initiative. Let's go over to

the UK, because how many telescopes there? We have used the Lovell

telescope, and even as far away as Cambridge to track one of the

candidates. Six radio telescopes working in congruence. One of the

more interesting targets is is there. Over the course of the

evening, excitement gathered, and other people in America join this.

We got data in America, archive data, from West Virginia, the

greenback telescope. We called our friends in Hawaii because we wanted

to get optical and infrared data must be called the biggest telescope

in the world. It is Hawaii but you are 13,000 feet in the mind him. The

dome was frozen shut. They hacked away at the icicles chorus. The

director of the Institute have away so we could get the data -- for us.

We don't recommend you do this at home, but we were late in the bar

last night, and we rang up the Greenback telescope. I also saw you

ringing Chile. We called the Canary Islands, but it was snowing, but we

still call them. They have been trained on one target in particular,

and we will talk about that later. It's all because of the effort of

Stargazing Live view is that we've done it. We are contributing to the

sum total of human knowledge rather than the usual television thing.

This is real star. Real science. We have also been getting astounding

images sent over in the last couple of days. Look at this one. The moon,

but a beautiful photograph by Julian Cooper from the Black Country. Also

beautiful photos of this sunspot group. Again, this is the thing that

gives us the possibility of Aurora Borealis tonight. We gave a

prediction of the time that the burst of energy might arrive. That

might not have been exactly right and we might still be waiting. It is

ongoing. We have space observatories up there and we think it might

arrive now. I want to show you a couple more. This is a bit of a

cheat. We talk about amateur imagery is -- images, but this is a

beautiful picture from Reykjavik, in Iceland. Just a few moments ago in

Norway, Liz Bonnin took to the skies to see if any of the recent activity

on the sun is producing any Aurora yet. How is it looking, Liz? Welcome

back to a world first, Aurora hunting. We are crammed into a

plane, and the equipment is working nicely. Pete Lawrence is with us on

the flight, so let's take a look outside the window. In the last ten

minutes, this beautiful site revealed itself. A lot of structure

and beautiful curls at the bottom of it. Very bright tonight, isn't it?

Very nice. Lots of structure. It's been changing as we have watched out

of the window, lots of vertical rays. Am I wishful thinking, or can

I see some red and brown? I can see some red at the right. That is a

first, and we're excited about it. Let's talk about the forecasting we

had last night. Has the corona hit the earth? What has changed between

last night and now? It hasn't hit us. It's hard to forecast the

arrival, and it got slow down as it headed from the sun towards us. It

could arrive anywhere between now and 4am. It could still affect this

beautiful light display we see tonight? Absolutely. That is the

beauty of space weather. The aurora changing all tonight. I will leave

you with that beautiful image, a sight for sore eyes. See you in a

bit. Seeing different colours within the Aurora, as we have. You can see

the red on the right, but if that is the immediate, who knows what will

happen? There have been special Stargazing Live parties taking place

up and down the country, and there is one in Egham, in Sussex. A

wonderful evening at Royal Holloway University. Thousands of excuse you

asked it -- enthusiastic stargazers, are you having a good time? What has

that been the best thing so far? I think it was the DIY. What do you

look forward to seeing next? Tourists in space. That is the thing

about this, they're so many things going on. There is the option also

to see yourself in infrared, and there is an army of astronomers and

telescopes to look at the sky. We've even set up a field of astronomers

away from the light so we can take some wonderful views of what the

clear sky has to offer. And I will also show you how you can find

galaxies through your own telescope and how to navigate through the

stars. Back to the studio. Lots of young faces in the studio. Those

youngsters seem to be the new co-hosts, and I know how you feel

about this out region getting involved. Getting kids excited about

astronomy leads to so many other things, entrepreneurialism, careers

in science. I remember when I was about three years old watching the

Clangers. And we are yet to find them! The great thing about them was

the row of kids about seven or eight years old, and that is what

astronomy did for me, and I went into physics and I caught the bug.

Your career has been mainly based on space hardware, mainly the James

Webb telescope, a tremendous telescope. It is amazing. It will

travel 1.5 kilometres away from Earth and then deploy, which looks

challenging, but what comes out is a heat shield visit and infrared

telescope and the biggest source of heat nearby the son, so it hides

behind the earth and it protects it from some of the sun and it has

Earth radiation. This is the heat shield, then? It's about the size of

a telescope. It's going to be launched in about 2018, hopefully.

We see the golden mirror, so what is the difference between that and the

Hubble telescope? The Hubble telescope was mainly optical, but

the James Webb is infrared, so it gets orange and red and the rest is

infrared. But why? We have pictures of the Milky Way, so what is it that

the James Webb gives us? It was called a next-generation space

telescope. Mind you, it is coming from a long way. We can see the

Milky Way galaxy, but here you can see the patches of dust, and of

course a visible light, optical light, which doesn't past -- passed

through it. But with the infrared you can see what is behind. An

interesting look at the centre of the galaxy, the black hole obscured

by the dust. What I find fascinating is that when people think of

telescopes they think of visible light, but we have an amazing piece

of equipment, a radio telescope, and the James Webb is infrared. We take

parts of the Informatics spectrum and get a broader picture of what is

out there. This will be coming back to earth and we will see later.

There is a huge question about the Milky Way that spin around for

hundreds of years, but Simon Taylor of Runcorn has sent things in over

the last two years, and asked, if we've never been outside the Milky

Way, how do we know what it has been looking like? Let's find out. On a

clear, moonlit night you can see a milky glow across the night. The

Romans called it a milky road, and when Galileo pointed his telescope

at it, he discovered that this haze of light was in fact made up of

distant stars. When we look out into the night sky, we see the stars and

the glowing gas and dust which are bound together by gravity and make

the galaxy, which we call the Milky Way. But because we are in it, it's

very hard to work out what the shape of the galaxy actually is. One of

the first attempts to map the galaxy was from astronomer William Herschel

in 1785. What needed was to assume that all of the stars we can see the

sky are roughly of the same brightness and it uniformly

distributed. By doing that, he came up with a map, which is the shape of

the known universe of the time. Now, this is not accurate, the many

reasons. But one of them is that there are many stars in the Milky

Way galaxy that cannot be seen from Earth because they are obscured by

dust. No one appreciated the children -- true extent of the Milky

Way until tools were developed to help them peer through the dust. In

1955, the Stargazing Live -- Lovell telescope was built at Jodrell bank,

and it did not look at Starlight, but was designed to capture radio

waves. While visible light is easily blocked by dust, radio waves

emanating from the furthest reaches of our galaxy can pass through.

Clive Dickinson is an astronomer who choose into these electromagnetic

waves from our Milky Way. -- choosing. -- tunes in. Obviously

there are lots of stars in the galaxy, but when you look with the

radio waves you get a different picture. You can still see the

galactic plane, but you can also see completely different things, and

different objects and different structures. What is revealed is that

the space between the stars is far from empty. It is filled with gas,

mostly hydrogen. And because radio telescopes can detect waves emitted

by the hydrogen gas, they can be deduced to work out the shape of the

Milky Way. This is a map of the hydrogen gas in our galaxy that was

first made in the 1950s, and the hydrogen follows the distribution of

stars in the galaxy. By measuring the velocity of that gas, and the

brightness in any direction, you can deduce that the Milky Way is, in

fact, a giant spiral of stars. But astronomers are now mapping more

than hydrogen. These brands in new views of our galaxy show other

components in our Milky Way, including the dust that obscure

would their view 200 years ago. By combining these results, we are

finally beginning to build a picture of what the Milky Way looks like. A

disc of hundreds of billions of stars, gas and dust, swirling around

a central bar into the most beautiful spiral galaxy.

We know enough now to take an educated guess at what the Milky Way

looks like. About 27 light-years from the centre. But the most

distinctive features of the spiral arms. They are the focus about one

of the big debates about the Milky Way. How many arms are there and

what pattern do they form? That is one thing the team here at Jodrell

Bank have been studying. Professor Tim O'Brien is here. You have one of

your telescopes scanning? The severed meter telescope has been

scanning through the Milky Way and I have a live signal from it now. What

you are seeing in this spectrum which is updated in real-time, the

peaks in the middle are from hydrogen atoms in the spiral arms of

the Milky Way. There is a peak along the side which is a second arm. It

indicates a cloud of hydrogen gas as we look through the disc of the

Milky Way. Each produces a peak in this spectrum. We just talked about

the infrared, this is the 21 centimetre? Yes, it is the same

thing Maggie mentioned, there is dust and it makes it difficult to

see through it. What is this image? It is a scan we did earlier. You see

these patterns, each of these spikes is a spiral arm. I can see three

arms for example. It seems to reveal it into arms and three arms? It is

difficult to see the structure of the Milky Way from inside. We were

aware of four of them, and then there was a paper that said there

were just two, now they reckon there are four of them again. This

telescope, we have taken over. It is not looking it's beautiful self. But

it is pointing at an interesting object? But beside the moon, there

was an object discovered by our view was the other day that is billions

of light years away. We will be showing you that later. It is not

the only galaxy you can see from Earth. Mark Thompson can show you

how to see our closest galactic neighbours.

We have wonderful clear skies. The party and come local astronomers. I

want to show you this wonderful moon. We are here to spot as many

galaxies as we can. We shot this video in Norfolk a few days ago that

the Andrew Meda galaxy. Jamie, what can you say? I can see a bit of a

blur. If you look to one side, you can use a technique called averted

vision. Have another look. Is that better? Can you see the spiral

nature of the galaxy? Yes. It is wonderful, you are looking back in

time, 2.5 million years. It is a weird concept. You can see it with

binoculars and you can see it in the south-west at this time of year. I

will leave you to enjoy that. There are a couple of other galaxies you

can see tonight. We had some footage we took about half an hour ago

called M81 if we look through the Hubble telescope, it looks

spectacular. It is visible just above the plough at this time of

night. If you want to bind the details you have two June into my

Starcast. This is a view of M82 sometimes you can see the two

galaxies through one telescope will stop with the big Hubble telescope,

we get some wonderful views, sharing the turbulent nature in that galaxy

where loads of new, young stars are starting to form. That is all we can

see for tonight. If it is clear where you are, get outside and see

how many galaxies you can spot. You can find information on our website.

Now back to Brian and Dara O'Brian. We are about to explore a galaxy in

more details. There is a new mission underway set to revolutionise our

knowledge of the Milky Way. The chief K scientist behind this is

Professor Gerry Gilmore. We spoke to Caroline about the nerve wracking

nature of space exploration. What did you feel? I was there. It is an

interesting experience. There was perceptible relief when it opened up

and it was working. It is not just the money it is the 20 years of work

from the 400 engineers. Tell us about the mission? GAIA is designed

to answer the questions you were asking. It is a shield half the size

of a tennis court, but it is a big camera and to telescope will stop it

is taking a video of the sky for five years and will measure the

distance of a billion objects. This is exquisite UK technology. They are

cameras? Every one of these things is a bigger version of what you have

in your telephone. This is only half of it. You have two touch them

carefully. In terms of an eight megapixel camera, what is that? It

is a Ilion pixel camera. It is very sensitive, thousands of times more

sensitive in terms of dynamic range and quality of anything that has

ever been made before. We need that to get that exquisite position GAIA

is designed to get. If you put a human hair in space, this thing can

see either side of it? From London. GAIA will locate the stars. It is

the equivalent of locating a small coin on the moon. Also how they are

moving? Yes, we keep doing this for five years and see how it moves. It

allows us to measure the distance of the object. We can see where all of

these objects are in 3-dimensional. Also how everything is moving. When

we walk through space and we can see what is there, and where it really

is, but how those things are moving and from that we can deduce the

entire formation of the Milky Way and that is what GAIA is. What

affect will this have on the industry? GAIA will rewrite the

textbooks. People have studied with these giant telescope because they

knew it was interesting. We haven't done that for a billion objects

before. So GAIA will do it for a billion objects and tell us what

looks normal. How did the Milky Way get to be the way it is? We have a

video from last year and one of the theories. We know the Andromeda

galaxy, one with about a trillion stars is coming towards us quite

quickly and is going to hit us. The debate is that it has hit us before?

That is one of the questions GAIA is designed to answer. We can

understand one, then we have a Rosetta Stone for all of them. To

answer that question we need to know not only were the galaxies are now,

so GAIA will tell us that, we also need to know how much they weigh.

That is the unique thing with GAIA. We can introduce weight, so we know

for the first time, not only what we can see, but everything that is

there. It is an incredible project. We will be talking to you later. In

a moment we will be revealing a new galaxy you have discovered, but last

night Brian looked at how we might fuel a starship puckered

transporters to the stars as close to the speed of light. What about

the astronauts on board? I were to find out what it would feel like.

To travel anywhere fast, first you have to accelerate. Apparently this

car can go from zero to 60 mph in just six seconds. Acceleration

creates the force that pins at you back in your chair whenever you

change speed. And in small doses... It is a lot of fun. However, to get

to the kind of speeds you need for intergalactic travel, you can have

too much of a good thing. So, would my body stand any chance of handling

the kind of acceleration needed to reach near lightspeed? To find out,

I have come to brook city based in San Antonio in Texas. Hidden inside

building 170 is a machine of torture. In it, over 100 astronauts

have learned to endure the extreme acceleration of a space shuttle

launch. It is a human centrifuge. And today, it is my turn to take a

ride. How are you? This man is lead centrifuge technician. Basically I

am in a space shuttle launch? Yes, we will go through the same protocol

the astronauts go through. The centrifuges is going to spin me ever

faster, subjecting me to the crushing force. What can the body

take? The G will be pushing on your chest. I won't feel more sure is, I

won't feel ill? I hope you don't. Will I feel all of my limbs heavier?

Your ear lobes, your eyelids, everything will feel three times

heavier. It is heavy enough as it is! Wow! This is amazing. At maximum

acceleration, reducing 3G, my body will feel three times heavier than

normal. It takes shuttle astronauts seven seconds to reach the speed.

Obviously they are trained professionals. Three, two, 1...

Liftoff. You are at 2.5 G. This is about as

much as the shuttle or anyone on board can take for more than a few

seconds. I am beginning to see why. It may not look it, but my arm feels

as heavy as a bag of cement. Wave to the camera. That is getting

uncomfortable and it would take months to get to lightspeed at this

rate. That is not good enough, we need more G. Would you like us to

take you 25 G for ten or 15 seconds just to see what it feels like? Go

on then. 2.5, three. 4.5 and we are at five, how does it feel? Tough

will stop back down now. That is tough. It is amazing. No way you

could do anything at five G. Can't even talk. It would not be very

flattering. He has been laughing at this all day. It is unflattering.

This famously good-looking man in a centrifuges, this is what he looked

at stop that was at seven. You look like an old woman out of correlation

Street. Now back to Liz. What is in the sky above you? You

have no idea what you have been witnessing.

We were giddy, applauding and at one point we were circled by this stuff.

The sky is filled with Green. There was a pink border at the bottom. It

is changing every second. What have we been looking at? I have lost

track of the amount of movements, the red and the pink. It is

glorious. It gets confusing doesn't it? You can see how the bands fold

upon themselves. They wrap around and you get various struck just. It

looked like a cascade of light. We have some footage from a few moments

ago. It was a multilayered, multi-structural, if that is the

right terminology. I am overwhelmed, it is mind blowing, I never expected

to see such beautiful displays. The fantastic thing was it that was

moving dynamically. The ripples of light moving through the whole

display. People describe the Aurora is a dance across the sky, and we

have witnessed it, it is glorious. With regard to the different shapes,

are they ever in a certain order or does it happen haphazardly? Those

bright bands are characteristic, and what happens is they fold up on

themselves and it gives the impression of a curtain hanging in

the sky. They can also wrap up into a huge spiral structure and they

look amazing. They are enormous, and go up to about 1600 kilometres. We

can see it now, it is a little more diffused, but they are vertical,

streaking through the colour. What is that? They are bits of the

curtain which folds up on themselves. When you look from the

side, you look through multiple layers of light, so they look

brighter than the rest of the Aurora, and those are called Reyes.

I have heard about the crowns as well. What are they? You see the

rays going up vertically, but if you're underneath, and you look up,

you can see those rays going up several hundred kilometres into the

night sky, and via perspective they converge together, that is the

Aurora Crown. On the right-hand corner of the screen we can see a

new bright bit of green that defuses upwards. It is very much in real

time, this is the beauty of the cameras, we can see it as it happens

without a need for time-lapse. Guys, we are besides ourselves. As you can

imagine from my boys. Please come back to us soon because we will try

to get more footage -- as you can imagine from my voice. You can tell

that you was quite overwhelmed. It is beautiful. That demonstrates the

power of the stars. We think of it giving light and heat, but it is a

magnetic field that is influencing particles from the stars and

reaching out across 90 billion miles and causing the atmosphere to light

up. It is beautiful. You say all that, and I am thinking Mavis Riley,

the old woman from Coronation Street. You look like Mavis Riley, I

am like Eric pickles. -- Pickles. We have been building up this discovery

all night, but it's quite a big one. Let's look at the images that the

viewers were the first to find. Six people on the first night saw a

close-up of the image, so let's zoom in on the galaxy. This is the

infrared image we showed people, and you can see that lens. There were

six people on the very first night is spotted this. You are looking at

the nearby galaxy, a couple of billion light years away, so nearby

in astronomy terms. This red ring, I think it is a ring, that is a

distant galaxy and we are seeing that as it was about 11 billion

years ago. To be clear, the light from the galaxy, 11 billion light

years away. Well, further than that, so it's actually about 40 billion

will -- years away. The starters, we are looking back at when the

universe was getting going -- for starters. This galaxy is quite big.

It's very active, and we know it is forming stars at a rate of about 100

times that of the Milky Way, so about a hundred huge stars every

year. The really exciting thing is what happens when we switch to the

radio. We will show you the radio image, and the scientists we work

with haven't seen it yet and we wanted to share this with all of the

collaborators. So this is from a little telescope, five other

telescopes. If you are a professional astronomer, this is

exciting. This blog here is the result of yesterday evening's

observations. -- this blob. It shows is a nice narrow arc, so perfectly

convincing as a lens, but there is more radio emission here than we

expected. Brighter than we expected. An unusual object, in that sense? We

get the Radio 2 ways, from the young stars. We can predict that, but we

might also get it from the gas spiralling in and growing a black

hole at the centre of the galaxy. We are watching the early stages of the

galaxy. It might be young galaxies merging together. This kind of black

hole normally means a collision, so these could be proto- galaxies.

Billions of years ago as well, so close to the beginning of the

universe. We still have to name it, and we want you to do that as well,

so please send suggestions. The only thing is that it needs to have the

number nine at the stars. We will give you a decision on that and we

will have it by the end of the show. And that will be its name. There

will be scientific papers with the name on it, and that's wonderful. To

find out what the conditions are like for stargazing outside, here is

Helen Willetts. It was not the best weather for getting out Stargazing

Live, but I can tell you there are going to be more clear skies

tonight. It won't be warm if you head out and about, widespread frost

coming and icy patches, and some patchy cloud, but if we are lucky

enough to see Aurora Borealis, and talking to my colleagues at the

space centre, it could arrive, we might see it in northern England and

Northern Ireland, but if we don't see it, plenty more to look at in

the sky and we should have plenty of clear skies. Come tomorrow, there

will still be cloud across southern and eastern areas, but for many,

with the cold light, it could be clear and plenty to see. If you are

not lucky enough to see Aurora Borealis, Jupiter is meant to be

bright in the sky, and the good news is that into the weekend, Friday and

Saturday, it looks clearer, but it will be cold, so wrap up warm.

Mark is under the stars in egg, with a huge crowd of other stargazers.

Hello, I'm still here. Now, all evening I've been at the Royal

Holloway University at one of the biggest star spectaculars in the

country - and this is where lots of budding scientists start their

astronomy careers. This is where many budding scientists start their

careers. And one of the first things any beginner has to is learn their

way around the night sky. So I've decided to enlist the help of Royal

Holloway's Physics department to bring to life the one constellation

everyone should know and I'm also going to use some ingenious BBC

software to create a human constellation. There is the gang of

students, we have armed them with torches. There you go, guys! With a

bit of BBC magic, we will try to create a human constellation. If you

look at the sky on any night, you can seek seven bright stars. There

they are appearing, and as those stars form, it is a shape we are

familiar with, the Plough. It's one we can see at any time of night from

the UK. The lines are wobbly, but maybe that is gravitational lenses.

You should be able to see this at any time of night, but the itself is

Ursa Major. Those are the stars slowly appealing -- appearing, and

they are slowly joining up the lines, that is the great Bear, the

name of the constellation, where we find MA and M 82. -- M81. I can't

quite see a bear, even squinting, but if you look now, you can make

the shape of the bear. The important thing about this constellation is

that there are two stars at the end of the bowl that point towards

Polaris, the North polar Star, and that is the only fixed star in the

sky. If you can find the poll by looking at those two points, you can

find anything in the night sky -- pole. And that means navigating is

easy, as I found, when I took to the seas. I might know my way around the

night sky, but I don't know how to use the knowledge down here on

Earth. Fortunately, I'm not alone. With me is natural navigation expert

Tristan Gooley. Without even knowing where we are starting, we are

navigating to Alderney. Tristan, nice to meet you. Alderney is 50

miles from England, and just three miles across, so it will make for a

small target as night falls. Before we can think about finding the

island, we need to think exactly where the boat is. We are not using

GPS, radar, any modern gizmos. I have even had my phone taken of me.

With the sun setting, we better make a start. To calculate position on

Earth, we need to work out which area of the night sky we are under.

And Polaris, the star always due north, is the perfect place to

start. If you're standing on the North Pole, the star directly above

your head would be Polaris, and if you travel south, that star gets

steadily lower and lower, and if you reach the equator, it will be on the

horizon. We are halfway between the equator and the North Pole, so we

should expect the North Star to be halfway between the horizon and

directly above. Tristan uses the sextant to measure Polaris and give

us the latitude, how far north or south we are. But what about East or

West? That is trickier. Unlike Polaris, all the other stars move

around the sky through the night. Tristan sets his sights on Vega, so

we can work out how long that -- how far along the path it is. Timing is

critical. Now! Like every star, the timing of the path is predicted.

That is 59 degrees and 47 minutes. Its position at any moment depends

on how far east or west you are, the longitudinal. The time now is for 30

a.m. And 50 seconds. Now we know the longitudinal attitude, we can

pinpoint where we are on the map, so we can tell what direction Alderney

should be. -- 4.30am. We are about five miles from land, so we can

pretty much say it is five miles due south. It is a pretty creepy

experience heading into the darkness. I can barely see anything

ahead of me. We are having to put our faith completely in the stars.

The signpost now is the star due south at this time of night. If we

look up, you can see Pegasus. If we look at the bottom left-hand star,

that is very close to the North Star, so that's a good one to follow

now. We sail into the darkness were a couple of hours and the stars

constantly move on, so once again, it's time to realign the sites.

Judging by where Polaris is, we properly need to head for the group

of stars called Cetus. If we look at that group of stars, and you lower

your gaze to the horizon, what do you see? I can see a clump of

lights, where I am confident that that is Alderney. Looks good to me.

The constellation known as the sea monster is currently south of us,

and it is guiding us in. One hour later, out of the inky blackness, we

see the shape of Alderney. We have made it. You can see where the Pope

kisses the ground. I can feel it coming on. We have travelled well

over 50 miles and managed to hit a small target using just the stars to

navigate by, but unfortunately, it has turned cloudy, so no way I can

enjoy a nice dark skies that Alderney has to offer. I guess it is

time for bed. Navigating by the stars seems archaic, but the

commander of the space shuttle navigates by the stars as well.

Let's play guess the planet. That is Mars. Has the biggest volcano in the

solar system. Next one, what do we have there? That is Mercury. No way

would we have had pictures like this without messenger being in orbit.

What is fascinating is in these permanently shadowed craters,

Mercury only presents one place, you can get zones that are so cold, you

can get water and ice mixed in with the pebbles. There is water on

Mercury, frozen solid. And planet you cannot recognise easily?

Neptune. Nobody has ever seen this planet. This has been worked out by

a team of scientists at Exeter University. This is remarkable, it

is a genuine simulation. A planet we have never seen. This is how they

did it. Planets beyond our solar system are

very far away and we have little hope of imaging verse surfaces. So

finding anything out about what these worlds are like, might seem

like an impossible task. But a team of planet hunters at Exeter

University are gearing up to do just that. With a new technique that may

one day help us identify another habitable Earth. Planets can be

detected by the almost imperceptible dip they cause as they pass in front

of their staff. And that is all of the scientists have to work with.

But with some ingenious methods they are beginning to construct these

distant worlds. This stock has been working on one of the current

planets. Orbiting around a star 150 light years away. When I started

there was only one planet we could study the atmosphere of. This is an

image of the host star. David measures precisely how the light

from the host star changes as this iris filters it through its

atmosphere. Starlight is made up of many different colours. And by

analysing the colours that are absorbed by the planet's atmosphere

when it passes across the star, David can work out what is in the

atmosphere and even how thick it is. Unfortunately, it does not sound

very welcoming. It looks quite alien, it is mainly made of hydrogen

and helium. They have also detected sodium in the atmosphere and not a

place that could support life as we know it. But even if they found

oxygen and nitrogen, an earthlike atmosphere, to predict if it could

be habitable we have to see how the atmosphere behaves. And that is how

David was Makro Collie comes in. We are trying to interpret these

observations of these climates. To do this Nathan's team have

reconstruct did its atmosphere in the most sophisticated climate

prediction model around. The Met Office's model of planet Earth. This

brings the planet to life. This is the night side facing away from the

start. This is the heart day side, temperatures of a few thousand

degrees. And the arrows represent the wind flying past, incredibly

fast. With this model we can dive through its atmosphere and it

reveals 3000 miles down there are even stormy conditions. Very violent

region, and nastier place to be, for a human anyway. Although this might

not be the earthlike than it we are looking for, Nathan hopes modelling

its atmosphere will help the search. Models like this can make a

contribution in trying to find an alert analogue or an alert to win

and trying to understand that atmosphere. -- and Earth twin. You

can see the behaviour of the fluids? The model predicts there is an

equatorial band, so a Jetstream at the equator. Also a couple of

storms, that is Jupiter's red spot. This is orbiting around what we call

a K star. But it is the M stars that are the most common in the galaxy.

What these models have shown is that does not preclude the existence of

life potentially on these planets. These storms distribute the heat

around the planet. So we can add myth about 75% of the stars in the

galaxy could support life. But this cannot support life? Know it also

has silicon rain, so it rains glace. If you do last 20 years ago, perhaps

ten years ago, we did not know about the other solar systems in the

galaxy. Now we have over 1000 planets beyond the solar system

confirmed. Many of them looking at a planet as it passes across the

star. This is an encyclopaedia of the planets passing by. The most

interesting than it is, the most interesting candidates are the 12

planets that have been found and are most likely to be second earths.

They are in what is called the habitable zone of the staff. We can

also tell about the gases within the atmosphere? We can look at the

atmosphere to ask questions such as is their oxygen in the atmosphere?

Carbon dioxide, so the likes of Venus, it's atmosphere is too dense.

But we can look for industrial pollutants in the atmosphere. If you

found CFC which are not created naturally. You would know there is

industrial civilisation. We're not far away from being able to do that.

For the final time, we are crossing over to Liz who has been circling

the skies in Norway. We are still admiring the aurora borealis. It has

changed quite a lot? Yes, it has actually hit now. I am not landing

now. This could burst into a multicoloured ray of light? This is

the beginning of it. It is changing by the second. Do Rohrer occur

regularly? There is always something there, whether it be a faint glow up

to a full-blown display like we are going to get now. As we're looking

at this appear, there is the equivalent happening in the South?

Yes, in the southern Oval as well. We have been sending our hunters out

to get us some pictures. This was captured in Tasmania several hours

ago. It is beautiful. Seven hours ago then, that would have been

manifesting itself appear, the equivalent of it somewhere in the

zone? Yes, the northern zone as well. So many questions from viewers

about the nature of this. Someone asking, are they identical in

appearance? As one happens up here, the exact same patterns and

features, happens down there? If you are standing the same distance, yes

that is what would happen. When it comes to them being mirrored image

of each others, one is mirroring the other in shape and position? It was

thought for a long time that was the case, but in 2002 a couple of NASA

spacecraft by chance just imaged both ovals so they were able to

compared them. There are subtle differences. When things come from

the solar wind it can make both ovals move in opposite directions.

On the regions of maximum at liberty in the ovals tilt towards the dawn

side of the Earth as well. It is nearly time for us to say goodbye,

but it has been glorious. We are still waiting for changes in

colours. It has been an ambitious mission over the last three nights

and a privilege to observe this. We were lucky when we were on the

ground? Extremely lucky, I have known people who waited two weeks

and saw nothing at all. There is so much to learn, but somewhere in the

not too distant future, not only will we be able to admire this, we

will have learned enough to say exactly what is going on at that

moment in time. VAT for me is thrilling and it brings home are

intrinsic relationship with our start. That is it from us. We will

keep rolling until the end of the show. It has been an honour to be

part of this live from 30,000 feet. It is good night from northern

Norway. I don't know what to say without being hyperbolic. We knew it

was a gamble and we knew we could not get nothing. Mark, how are you

getting on? We have had a wonderful evening, the

unforgettable human constellation. A Milky Way projection the size of a

house and there is a simulator somewhere. Not forgetting the

wonderful clear skies, we have seen beautiful images are planets and

beautiful images of galaxies. These guys are going to be here for some

time yet so I am going to join the party. So from me and everyone here,

goodbye. Rebecca, some names coming in. Nine Jodrell Scope, I like that.

We will be discussing this in a moment. Thank you for all of you who

have taken part. What a wonderful way to finish the series. Let's take

a last look at those images captured from the Ark ticks circle. It is

incredible. Thanks to all of our viewers who have sent in

photographs, or just watching at home. The show may be over for

another year, joiners in two minutes per K9's space tributes. The first

time we made this programme four years ago was to encourage you to

look up and go outside. We have described the planets, the space

probes orbiting the planets, let your imagination fly and we will see

you next year. Also in two minutes as well.