Programme Index

Discover 11,128,835 listings and 279,767 playable programmes from the BBC

The Sky at Night

Guides

Episode 2: Galaxies

Duration: 1 hour

First broadcast: on BBC FourLatest broadcast: on BBC Four

Galaxies are the building blocks of the universe. Our solar system sits inside a huge galaxy that we call the Milky Way - home to as many as 300 billion stars. But the Milky Way is itself just one of hundreds of billions of galaxies in the observable universe. Over the last 60 years of broadcasting, the Sky at Night has covered every major story of discovery about the galaxies, and in this film presenter Chris Lintott uses this archive to reveal the deepest secrets of galaxies, from their earliest beginnings to their very ends.

From the first galaxy ever discovered through 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'll discover how galaxies work - from the secrets of their spiral arms to the dramatic events that drive their evolution - uncovering a weird and wonderful menagerie of objects along the way. Ultimately, the discovery of the galaxies is also the story of how we found our place in the cosmos, and discovered answers to some of the biggest questions in the Universe. Show less

About this data

This data is drawn from the data stream that informs BBC's iPlayer and Sounds. The information shows what was scheduled to be broadcast, meaning it was/is subject to change and may not be accurate. More