The Sky at Night - Season 61 / Year 2017

All good travel guides need a map, and the team unveil the most detailed 3-D map of the Milky Way ever produced. A map that reveals that there may be 50 per cent more stars in the galaxy than we previously thought. American astronomer Neil deGrasse Tyson gives us a guided tour of the strangest stars we have ever observed, and we discover that the Milky Way may already be colliding with our neighbouring galaxy, Andromeda.

The team travel to the island of La Palma in the Canary Islands where they take control of some of the world's largest telescopes to view the most spectacular sights in the night sky.

When the first episode of The Sky at Night was transmitted in April 1957, it was still thought that Mars could be home to advanced life, the Space Age was yet to begin, and the Big Bang was just a controversial theory. So to celebrate its 60th anniversary, this special programme looks at how our knowledge of the universe has been transformed in the last six decades - from the exploration of the solar system to the detection of black holes and planets orbiting distant stars. Featuring contributions from Jim Al-Khalili, Dallas Campbell and Monica Grady and including special birthday messages from a host of stars, this is a celebration of an extraordinary age of discovery, and The Sky at Night's role in covering it.

This edition comes from the heart of one of the most influential - and surprising - organisations in the history of astronomy. Maggie and Chris have been granted rare access to the Vatican and its little-known observatory, the Specola Vaticana, perched on a hilltop 30km outside Rome.

There they explore its rich history and contemporary cutting-edge science, going inside the Vatican walls to visit the Tower of the Winds, a secret antique sundial that revolutionised the length of the year; the remains of a nest of telescopes atop an old medieval church where the science of spectroscopy was born; and the modern labs, manned by priest scientists who study a range of contemporary astronomical problems, from meteorites to binary stars to the birth of the universe itself.

Scientists have spent hundreds of years observing the planets with telescopes and over fifty exploring the solar system through space travel, so you might have thought they knew our cosmic neighbourhood pretty well.

But actually, they've hardly scratched the surface. The reality is that most of the solar system is still almost a complete mystery. Beyond the orbit of Neptune lies a vast number of strange, dark, icy worlds - the trans-Neptunian objects. And it's only over the last few years that we've even started to see and understand them, and have begun to realise they play a crucial role in the evolution of our solar system.

Maggie Aderin-Pocock and Chris Lintott discover how we've found hundreds of thousands of these strange new objects, some with multiple moons, others with strange orbits, and some spinning way faster than any planet in the solar system.

Marcus du Sautoy explores how studying the mathematics governing the behaviours of these objects has changed our understanding of how the solar system evolved, and how it might eventually end.

In August, the most spectacular meteor shower of 2017 coincides with transmission: The Perseids! If it's clear, it'll be a great chance to see scores of bright shooting stars streaking across the night sky. As those shooting stars vaporise in the atmosphere, a small part of some of them will fall to earth as dust.

This dust will contribute to a total of about 40,000 tonnes of space dust and debris that falls onto our planet every year. In this episode, Chris Lintott and Maggie Aderin-Pocock investigate this mysterious cosmic debris that comes from outer space.

On 15 September 2017, the most successful space mission of all time will come to a dramatic and violent end as the Cassini probe is sent crashing into the planet Saturn. This one space probe has rewritten the rules of space exploration, repeatedly surprising scientists with its incredible and unexpected observations. It discovered lakes of pure methane on Saturn's moon Titan, mysterious weather systems on Saturn itself, and all the conditions for life on the moon Enceladus. It has exceeded every expectation of its original design brief, and its mission duration has been extended not once but four times. Its legacy for science and for space travel is unique. Chris Lintott and Maggie Aderin-Pocock explore four major ways in which space exploration of the future has been changed by the discoveries of the Cassini mission.

Nearly 50 years ago, Neil Armstrong stepped onto the moon and it seemed like the dawn of a new age. Soon we'd be flying to the moon as effortlessly as we fly to America, and a moon base would be filled with men and women building a better future out in space. But then the moon fell out of fashion. We soon realized it was brutally inhospitable and getting there was eye-wateringly expensive. Rather than spend huge sums of money going where we'd already been, Mars and the other planets seemed much more exciting destinations. But now that is set to change. For the first time in a generation, there are credible plans to go back to the moon, and maybe even build a working moon base. The Sky at Night examines this renewed interest in the moon, and asks why it's happening now and who is at the forefront of this new wave of lunar exploration. They meet the tech companies driven by big ambitions to launch a new era of space exploration using private money. So, is a moon base really viable, or merely a pipe dream?

This month The Sky at Night explores this world of transient phenomena. We hear more about the explosive event that created the recently detected gravitational wave - the collision of two neutron stars. And Chris spends 24 hours at the SWIFT space telescope base in Leicester in an attempt to detect a gamma ray burst - the most powerful and extreme short-term event known.

Maggie goes to meet the team that are searching for the mysterious, barely understood transient phenomena called fast radio bursts. And Lucie Green reveals that some important short-term phenomena can occur much closer to home too.

Astronomy used to be about staring up at the unchanging sky, so this search for transitory objects is truly revolutionary. It's time to enter the spectacular world of astronomy that takes place... in the blink of an eye...

The Sky at Night celebrates one of the most profound, moving and enjoyable activities there is - the ancient art of looking up, studying and marvelling at the night sky. The programme is based at the Royal Observatory, Greenwich - the spiritual home of British astronomy - and sets out to discover the many and varied ways we can all enjoy the majesty of the skies. Maggie Aderin-Pocock travels to Norway to see the northern lights, and discovers that we are in a golden age of aurora research as she learns what they tell us about the solar system. Chris Lintott learns the ancient art of navigating by the stars, whilst Pete Lawrence helps choose the right equipment to set yourself up as an amateur astronomer.