RIP Patrick Moore

Sir Patrick Moore died the other day. He helped foster my love of astronomy through presenting The Sky at Night, a programme that I have watched since as far back as I can remember and still do today.  It was first aired in 1957 and Patrick presented every monthly programme except one from then until his death, making The Sky at Night the longest running programme presented by the same person in the world.

Patrick made astronomy accessible to me when I was very young, I even wanted to be an astronomer until I realised I was hopeless at maths and realised it wasn't for me! But I've never lost the wonder, the curiosity and fascination about the universe. We have amazing technology now which has shown us real space wonders so fabulous they could not be imagined, and God knows what still lies out there.

The Sky at Night, especially in the early days had very amateurish props, but that didn't matter, it all helped people to understand and was part of the charm of the programme. Patrick seemed to get more and more eccentric as the decades passed and he was very much part of the programme and it will never be the same, but I do hope it will continue.

One of the things on my bucket list is to look through a high magnitude telescope, I really must work on achieving that!