Patrick Moore
Sir Patrick Alfred Caldwell-Moore,
CBE,
HonFRS,
FRAS (born
4 March,
1923), known as
Patrick Moore, is a
British astronomer who has attained an important position in British astronomy as a writer, organizer and presenter of the subject. He is a member and former president of the
British Astronomical Association, co-founder and former president of the
Society for Popular Astronomy, author of over 70 books on astronomy, presenter of the long-running
BBC series,
The Sky at Night, and a well-known figure on British television. He has a reputation for
eccentricity, stemming mainly from his mode of speech, his trademark
monocle, and his fondness for the
xylophone.
Sir Patrick was born in
Pinner,
Middlesex,
United Kingdom and at an early age moved to
Sussex, where he grew up. His youth was marked by poor health, and he was educated at home. Influenced by his mother, he developed an interest in
astronomy that persisted into later life and helped to make him a famous and popular personality. During the
Second World War, Moore served in the
RAF and from 1940 until 1945 was a navigator in
RAF Bomber Command, reaching the rank of
Flight Lieutenant. The war had a significant influence on his life: his only known relationship ended when his fiancée, a nurse, was killed by a bomb which fell on her ambulance. When later asked why he never married, he answered that "second best is no good for me".
After the war, Sir Patrick constructed a home-made
reflecting telescope in his garden and began to observe the
Moon. He was fascinated by the subject and he is now acknowledged as a specialist in
lunar observation, with one of his particular areas of expertise being studying the glimpses of the Moon's
far side that are occasionally visible due to the Moon's
libration. He was also an early observer of
Transient lunar phenomena, short-lived glowing areas on the lunar surface. In 1945, he was elected a Fellow of the
Royal Astronomical Society. At 10:30 pm on
April 26,
1957, in an event that was to be a landmark of his career, Moore presented the first episode of
The Sky at Night, a monthly BBC television program for astronomy enthusiasts. Since then, he has appeared on the show every month, with the exception of
July 2004 due to a near-fatal bout of
food poisoning, making him the world's longest-running
television presenter and a well-recognised face on British television. Since 2004, the programme has been presented from Sir Patrick's home rather than at the BBC studios due to mobility problems caused by arthritis.
Sir Patrick has done some significant work in the field of astronomy: in 1959, the
Soviet Union used his charts of the moon to correlate their first pictures of the far side with his mapped features on the near side and he was involved in the lunar mapping used by the
NASA Apollo space missions. In 1965, Sir Patrick was appointed Director of the newly-constructed
Armagh Planetarium, a post he held until 1968. During the Apollo program, he was one of the major presenters of
BBC television's coverage of the moon landing missions, the recordings of which the BBC have sadly wiped. In 1982
asteroid 2602 Moore was named in his honour. He compiled the
Caldwell catalogue of astronomical objects.
For a time during the
1970s, he was the Chairman of the anti-immigration
United Country Party. He held this position until the party was absorbed by the
New Britain Party in 1980. He is currently a prominent member of the
United Kingdom Independence Party. He is also a long-standing opponent of
fox hunting and all blood sports.
In 2001, Moore was
knighted and was appointed an
Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society. He also won a
BAFTA for his services to television. In January 2006 he released via his
website the DVD of his biography 'The Astronomical Patrick Moore'. On
7 March 2006, it was reported that he had been hospitalised with heart problems, followed two days later by the announcement that he had been fitted with a
pacemaker.
Aside from
The Sky at Night, a number of other television and radio shows have seen appearances from Moore, including six years, from 1992 until 1998, playing the role of
Gamesmaster in the television show of the same name: a character who professed to know everything there is to know about video gaming and sported his trademark monocle. He also appeared, in often self-parodying roles, in several episodes of
The Goodies, and is a regular guest on the radio programme
Just a Minute. He was heard in a minor role during the fourth radio series of
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. He has written more than 70 books, mostly
non-fiction dealing with astronomical topics and several
science fiction novels. He has also written two
operettas (See
Galileo: The True Story). His first novels were a series about the first arrivals on
Mars, followed in 1977 by the start of the
Scott Saunders Space Adventure series, aimed primarily at a younger audience, which eventually ran to six novels.
Until being forced to give up due to
arthritis, Moore was a keen
musician and accomplished
xylophone player. Internet animator
Jonti "Weebl" Picking pokes some well natured fun at this in one of his most popular toons entitled
Patrick Moore Plays The Xylophone[
1]. He sometimes performed novelty turns at the
Royal Variety Performance and once appeared in a song-and-dance act in a
Morecambe and Wise Christmas spectacular. As a guest on
Have I Got News For You, he accompanied the show's closing theme tune on the xylophone and as a pianist, once accompanied
Albert Einstein playing
The Swan by
Camille Saint-Saëns on the violin. He is a long-time friend of
Queen guitarist and fellow astronomer
Brian May, who is a regular guest on
The Sky At Night. In October 2006 their co-authored book on the origin of the universe is due to be released.
Due to his long-running television career and eccentric habits, distinctively rapid speech delivery and in later years his ever-present monocle, Moore is widely-recognised and well-respected in the United Kingdom, even by those with no interest in astronomy. This was used to great advantage for a 1976
April Fool's joke on
BBC Radio 2, when Moore announced that at 9:47 am a once-in-a-lifetime astronomical event was going to occur: Pluto would pass behind Jupiter, temporarily causing a gravitational alignment that would reduce the Earth's own gravity. Moore informed listeners that if they could jump at the exact moment that this event occurred, they would experience a temporary floating sensation. The BBC later received hundreds of phone calls from listeners claiming to have felt the sensation.
*
BBC Biography of Sir Patrick Moore*
Watch "The Sky at Night" free at the official BBC site*
The Caldwell Club*
The filming of The Astronomical Patrick Moore
