Close Encounters

Last week I had the pleasure of visiting the BBC in Birmingham to help edit The Sky at Night as an astronomy researcher. The episode was about near-Earth objects, specifically 2008TC3, which crash landed in the Sudan last year, after being tracked from space. You can currently catch the episode on the BBC iPlayer.

The BBC was very nice and friendly and the whole thing was really interesting to someone who knows nothing about it. In fact the experience of sitting, editing in a darkened room in close-quarters with two other people and twenty computer monitors is not unlike operating a large telescope. Happily, no altitude sickness though.

This is just one step away from fulfilling my childhood dream of meeting Sir Patrick! Maybe one day. In honour of this event, I found the old B3ta video ‘Patrick Moore plays the xylophone’ – an homage to the man himself.