The Sky at Night

Presenter:
This is a very important point. The sun is dangerous. If you look straight at the sun through any telescope or binoculars, you will focus all the sun's light and heat onto your eye, and you will blind yourself, perhaps permanently. It is only safe to look closely when the Sun is totally eclipsed. Therefore if you are going, take every possible precaution and take no chances. The one golden rule for looking straight at the Sun through any telescope or binoculars is... don't!

Presenter:
I was invited to a science meeting, and to a small reception afterwards... and there was Albert Einstein. He is, without a doubt, worthy to rank with Newton, and I found him to be exactly what I expected; unworldly, communicative and blissfully unaware of his unique status. I remember asking him if he could explain "infinity" in non-mathematical terms, and he replied that he had never been able to do so in a way that would really satisfy him. Well, if Einstein couldn't, I am sure that nobody else can. One episode sticks in my mind: he was an expert violinist, and I accompanied him on the piano as he played Saint-Sa?ns' "Swan". Oh for a tape of it - but there were no tapes in those far-off times!

Presenter:
This century will be very interesting, though I will only see the first part of it, of course. For instance, the first man on Mars has probably already been born, and we may have made contact with another life-form from somewhere we can only see clearly from Earth in the sky at night.

[unintentional double-entendre]

Pete Lawrence:
One of the problems that I have when I'm looking at Uranus is that there's something much more tempting very close by.