Beyond the Milky Way When the third Earl of Rosse first looked through his ' monster ' telescope, he saw the curious spiral structure of the Whirlpool Galaxy. Take away all the stars and cloudy nebulae of our own Milky Way and we see beyond to a universe of 100,000 million other galaxies-spiral, elliptical, irregular or peculiar - often grouped in great clusters. Today's astronomers use modern electronic aids to peer into the most distant realms of space and time, back to when the galaxies first formed. The Universe was different then. Can we begin to see an evolutionary sequence, with quasars - that may contain black holes - dying away to hide in galaxies like ours? And in the future will we collide with our neighbour galaxies as the Whirlpool already has? Narrator CHARLES KAY
Film editor STEFAN RONOWICZ Editor SIMON CAMPBELL-JONES Written and produced by ALEC NISBETT