Catch up TV
The Search for Alien Life
The Sky at Night team investigate the latest science in the hunt for extraterrestrial life. Scientists have never been more obsessed with finding aliens than they are right now. And they’re using the most advanced engineering and technology to look in some pretty weird and wonderful places across the universe.\n\nDr Maggie Aderin-Pocock visits Professor Mark Sephton at Imperial College London – one of the scientists leading on the Perseverance Rover mission to Mars. This is the first mission to bring samples of rock from another planet back to earth, and Mark shows how they use images sent from the rover to decide the best places to take the precious samples. He reveals the latest technology used to analyse the samples of Martian rock for signs of life.\n\nApril 2023 sees the launch of a major European Space Agency mission to explore habitability on Jupiter’s icy moons, with the Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer aka Juice. Professor Chris Lintott meets leading scientist Professor Michele Dougherty. She reveals why frozen worlds such as Europa, Ganymede and Callisto are the next hot targets for alien life, and what this has to do with a game of squash.\n\nOur in-house stargazing expert Pete Lawrence tells us how this month we can see Venus in a dramatic scene alongside the Hyades and Pleiades clusters. And George Dransfield is in Chile, searching for earth-like planets outside our solar system. We learn how these potentially habitable exoplanets are identified, as she carries out essential telescope maintenance in the Atacama Desert. Back in the UK, she meets Dr Sean McMahon – an astrobiologist at Edinburgh University investigating how reflected light could be used to search for life on exoplanets in the future.
Source: BBC 4
Most recent episodes of The Sky at Night
The Sky At Night
Space Weather: The Perfect Storm
Life on Earth depends on the sun for its light and its warmth. But the activity of our nearest star also poses a serious threat to all of us. In the most extreme cases, solar st ...
08-06-2026
BBC 4
The Sky At Night
Jodrell Bank: Tuning Into The Universe
It started 80 years ago with a field, army surplus, wartime radar and a visionary idea - and it changed how we see the universe forever. In this episode, we step inside the rema ...
12-05-2026
BBC 4
The Sky At Night
Destination Moon
Maggie Aderin, self-proclaimed lunar-tic, examines Nasa’s Artemis II mission: the first crewed journey towards the moon in more than 50 years. It’s a mission designe ...
14-04-2026
BBC 4
The Sky At Night
Space Mysteries: The Sky At Night Meets Curious Cases
Do aliens exist, and can we talk to them? What does a black hole sound like? Does the universe look like a doughnut? In a spectacular season finale, The Sky at Night teams up wi ...
13-11-2025
BBC 4
The Sky At Night
Brits In Space
Three, two, one, lift off! This edition launches into the extraordinary - and extraterrestrial - world of astronaut training, discovering what it truly takes to become a Europea ...
15-10-2025
BBC 4
The Sky At Night
The Expanding Universe
The team explores one of the greatest discoveries of modern astronomy - that our universe is expanding - and the new questions it raises about how the cosmos works.\n\nIn the 19 ...
10-09-2025
BBC 4
The Sky At Night
Queen Of Pulsars
Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell is a discoverer and an explorer of the distant cosmos, and she has walked among the stars. She discovered the first pulsar in 1967 - a discovery so imp ...
14-08-2025
BBC 4
The Sky At Night
Exoplanets - Strange New Worlds
The team go on a cosmic adventure, exploring one of the newest areas of modern astronomy – the search for exoplanets, the distant bodies that orbit stars beyond our own so ...
16-07-2025
BBC 4
The Sky At Night
Greenwich: A Journey Through Space And Time
To celebrate the 350th anniversary of the Royal Observatory, the team recreate history. \n\nIn the times of the early Astronomers Royal, scientists would gather at spectacular d ...
12-06-2025
BBC 4
The Sky At Night
Secrets Of The Red Planet
Could life have once thrived on Mars? What mysterious force is moving large boulders across its dusty surface today? And will a return trip to our neighbouring planet ever be po ...
15-05-2025
BBC 4
Most popular episodes of The Sky at Night
The Sky At Night
Question Time Special
A special Question Time edition of the programme, recorded at the University of Exeter as part of the British Science Association’s Science Festival.\n\nThe panel is chair ...
12-10-2023
BBC 4
The Sky At Night
Space Weather: The Perfect Storm
Life on Earth depends on the sun for its light and its warmth. But the activity of our nearest star also poses a serious threat to all of us. In the most extreme cases, solar st ...
08-06-2026
BBC 4
The Sky At Night
2075: Our Place In Space
The Sky at Night is embarking on a journey into the future as we explore how space will revolutionise life on Earth over the next 50 years. As humanity's reach extends into the ...
11-09-2024
BBC 4
The Sky At Night
Space Mysteries: The Sky At Night Meets Curious Cases
Do aliens exist, and can we talk to them? What does a black hole sound like? Does the universe look like a doughnut? In a spectacular season finale, The Sky at Night teams up wi ...
13-11-2025
BBC 4
The Sky At Night
Beyond The Visible
The focus for this edition of The Sky at Night is on astronomical research that is beyond the scope of our eyes. \n\nWe think of astronomy as something we do primarily using our ...
15-10-2020
BBC 4
The Sky At Night
The Multiverse Of Mystery
The Sky at Night in the Multiverse of Mystery is a magical journey into the far-flung ideas at the very edge of scientific knowledge, exploring the concepts that today seem like ...
17-11-2022
BBC 4
The Sky At Night
The Search For Alien Life
The Sky at Night team investigate the latest science in the hunt for extraterrestrial life. Scientists have never been more obsessed with finding aliens than they are right now. ...
13-04-2023
BBC 4
The Sky At Night
Greenwich: A Journey Through Space And Time
To celebrate the 350th anniversary of the Royal Observatory, the team recreate history. \n\nIn the times of the early Astronomers Royal, scientists would gather at spectacular d ...
12-06-2025
BBC 4
