Bringing the Universe to Earth

After an interesting and entertaining start last night the true value of this series will be determined by the content covered in tonight's programme. Generally the media reviews have been positive - although many have been left wondering why the girl in Hawaii and why Jonathan Ross.

Today's programme will undoubtedly cover this morning's partial eclipse of the Sun which looked rather cool from the roads around Utrecht - a stunning sight of a deep red sun being obscured in the cool crisp morning air.

The BBC foray into real time stargazing took a new turn tonight through the hosts of Professor Brian Cox, and scientist turned comedian Dara O'Briain. The programme is hosted from the legendary Jodrell Bank radio telescope on the outskirts of Manchester, UK. The Lovell Telescope, at 76m in diameter, was for many years the largest fully steerable radio telescope in the world and has been serving the astronomy community for well over 50 years.

On the morning of 21 December 2010 the Moon will pass into the Earth's shadow and create the first full lunar eclipse for nearly three years. So as the Moon sets in the early morning over Europe it will do so in eclipse. Not unique, but certainly a rare event should the snow clouds part and allow skywatchers to see a orange-red setting Moon in the early morning.

Eclipse timings

Back in the later part of the 1970's NASA launched a couple of probes to visit the outer Solar System. These probes, Voyager 1 and 2, were only meant to last a few years, but thanks to some clever project planning and mankind's curiosity the spacecraft a still heading out away from the Earth on an eternal voyage through the galaxy.

The ESA-NASA SOHO mission has recently passed 15 years in orbit and observing the Sun. To coincide with this event ESA has created a java based platform to enable the public and scientists to browser through the SOHO data archives.