Main content
Sorry, this episode is not currently available

Stars

Episode 3 of 4

Chris Lintott opens up The Sky at Night's 60-year archive to reveal how stars work, their life cycles and how their own demise holds the key to our very existence.

For as long as humans have walked the Earth, the stars have fascinated us. But we have come a long way since the earliest days of astronomy when we had nothing but our eyes to observe the night sky. Since then we have designed an arsenal of ingenious machines to help us unlock the secrets of the stars – from how they work and move around the Universe to how they live and die. For more than 60 years, the Sky at Night has covered every major development in our understanding of the stars, and regular Sky at Night presenter, Professor Chris Lintott, uses this archive to reveal spectacular and surprising facts about these heavenly bodies. From the ancient myths of the constellations to today's cutting edge attempts to map our own Milky Way, this is a story of incredible ingenuity, extraordinary technology and spectacular discoveries. We will discover how stars work, from the nuclear reactions at their cores to the strange phenomena on their surfaces, and we will follow the life cycle of a star all the way through to its spectacular end – one of the most dramatic events in the Universe that also turns out to hold the key to our very existence.

58 minutes

Credits

Role Contributor
Presenter Chris Lintott
Producer Sophie Stephenson-Wright
Executive Producer Jonathan Renouf

Broadcasts

Join our photo group

Share images, inspiration and tips with fellow photographers