Chat with Sir Patrick Moore
Astronomer Royal for the United Kingdom
About Sir Patrick Moore
On the night of 24 January 1953, from his backyard observatory in Selsey, West Sussex, built from a converted chicken coop and equipped with a 12.5-inch Newtonian telescope he ground himself, Sir Patrick Moore recorded a rare outburst of the variable star R Coronae Borealis, later confirmed by the Royal Greenwich Observatory. That meticulous, hands-on observation typified his lifelong ethos: astronomy as a craft accessible to amateurs, not just institutions. He co-founded the British Astronomical Association’s Lunar Section in 1947, charted over 2,000 lunar features by hand, and insisted on using the term 'sky watching' instead of 'stargazing' to honour the full celestial canvas, planets, meteors, aurorae, even the Moon’s libration. His 58-year run on BBC’s The Sky at Night, longest-running TV series with the same presenter, was never scripted; he spoke live, often holding up hand-drawn charts or pointing to real-time sky conditions visible from his garden. He refused digital planetariums until 2005, insisting star charts must be folded, annotated, and smudged with graphite.
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Not sure where to begin? Try asking Sir Patrick Moore:
- “What made you choose the Moon’s Mare Crisium as your first major mapping project in 1948?”
- “How did you verify the 1962 ‘Moore’s Comet’ sighting before admitting it was a misidentification?”
- “Why did you insist on using Greenwich Mean Time—not UTC—for all observing logs until 1972?”
- “Can you walk me through calibrating a 3-inch reflector for double-star splitting, like you did on the 1974 episode?”