In 1957, amateur astronomer Patrick Moore was asked to present three programmes on star-gazing for the BBC. Fifty-five years later, Sir Patrick Moore was firmly in the record books as the longest-serving television presenter for that same programme: The Sky at Night. He presented his last episode the week before he died, aged 89, on 9 December 2012.

Each month since the first edition in April 1957 — ahead of the Sputnik launch, before the race to the Moon — The Sky at Night has featured a host of astronomical and space-science topics: from black holes and neutron stars, to news of a comet, meteor shower or planet visible at that moment in the night sky to any backyard astronomer. Moore fronted all but one episode (owing to a food-poisoning incident in 2004), his interest in astronomy having been inspired as a child by G. F. Chambers's book The Story of the Solar System. And without doubt, it is his energy and enthusiasm for his subject that has fuelled the success and longevity of the show.

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Eccentric and monocled, the archetypal 'mad professor', and stunningly proficient on the xylophone — Moore was a well known public figure and widely credited as an inspiration to many astronomers and other scientists who had been young fans of The Sky at Night. Guests who have appeared on the programme include Carl Sagan, Fred Hoyle, Jocelyn Bell Burnell, Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Arthur C. Clarke.

Moore was made an honorary fellow of the Royal Society for his work as a science communicator — work that Astronomer Royal Sir Martin Rees has rightly acknowledged as “a lifetime commitment”.