Britain | Sir Patrick Moore

Fallen star

The death of a television presenter who brought the heavens to the masses

Shedding light on the firmament

IN THESE days of ever more specific expertise, astronomy is one of the few sciences in which the enthusiastic amateur can still hope to make a contribution. Among the most enthusiastic of these self-taught folk was Sir Patrick Moore, the presenter of a BBC astronomy programme called “The Sky at Night”, who died on December 9th.

Once a month for 55 years, as regular as the new Moon, Sir Patrick’s monocled face would appear on the nation’s TV screens. He and his guests would tell viewers about a spectacular constellation they might be able to see with their garden telescopes, or discuss results from an interplanetary space probe. It was, for the programme’s fans, exactly the sort of highbrow television that the BBC was created to provide, and which its commercial rivals would never have commissioned. (In fact, “The Sky at Night” was so popular that Mr Moore reportedly turned down offers from other TV stations, remaining loyally with the BBC.)

Despite his determinedly eccentric habits—he was rarely without his trademark monocle, and was a keen xylophone-player—Sir Patrick insisted that it was the beauty of the universe that drew his viewers, rather than any personal magnetism he might have possessed. Nevertheless, to many he was a national treasure on a par with Sir David Attenborough, the indefatigable presenter of the BBC’s big-budget nature documentaries.

Nor was he a dilettante or a lightweight: the study of the Moon was his passion, and he made several contributions to lunar science. Over his half-century on the air, he secured interviews with many notable figures, including Werner von Braun, the ex-Nazi designer of NASA’s Saturn V Moon rockets; Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell, who discovered pulsars, rotating neutron stars; and Neil Armstrong, a media-shy astronaut. His reputation crossed the Iron Curtain: he was invited to Russia to meet Armstrong’s counterpart, Yuri Gagarin, and became the first Westerner to see results from the Soviet Luna 3 probe, which mapped the Moon’s far side in 1959.

Some of his attitudes struck audiences as odd and even offensive. Sir Patrick disliked Germans and did not care who knew it (his fiancée had been killed in a German bombing raid in the second world war, and he never married). In the 1970s he became president of the short-lived, virulently anti-immigration United Country Party; later he supported the anti-EU United Kingdom Independence Party. He said he had abandoned watching “Star Trek” when a woman occupied the captain’s chair.

These days science is confident and cool. Comedians such as Dara O’Briain and Robin Ince entertain with science-friendly routines. Telegenic stars including Alice Roberts, an anthropologist, and Brian Cox, an astronomer (and ex-member of D:Ream, a 1990s Britpop band), host lavish, popular-science programmes on television. The front-runner to fill Sir Patrick’s shoes is probably Chris Lintott, an Oxford University astronomer, populariser of science and regular guest on the programme. Another candidate might be Brian May, who, in addition to playing the guitar for Queen, a rock band, holds a PhD in astrophysics and is a “Sky at Night” stalwart. Whoever it proves to be, those shoes are big.

This article appeared in the Britain section of the print edition under the headline "Fallen star"

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