Movies: Astronomy

Billions of years ago, Venus may have harbored life-giving habitats similar to those on the early Earth. Today, Earth's twin is a planet knocked upside down and turned inside out. Its burned-out surface is a global fossil of volcanic destruction, shr...

Following engineers and scientists on a groundbreaking mission as they build, test and launch the James Webb Space Telescope, the most powerful observatory ever constructed, and discovers the astonishing cosmological mysteries it will investigate....

Although the mountain volcano Mauna Kea last erupted around 4,000 years ago, it is still hot today, the center of a burning controversy over whether its summit should be used for astronomical observatories or preserved as a cultural landscape sacred ...

Cave paintings and lunar calendars exist in the caves and remains of prehistoric hunters studied recently. What if Prehistoric Man were clever enough to develop in depth scientific knowledge? As unlikely as it may seem, new data tend to prove that Pr...

Blue Peter presenters Helen Skelton and Barney Harwood want to learn more about the solar system so they challenge scientists Helen Czerski and Jem Stansfield to find out more. They look at how to make telescopes and rockets, and use a toilet roll to...

This feature-length documentary is a portrait of eclipse chasers, people for whom solar eclipses - among nature's more spectacular phenomena – are a veritable obsession. The film follows 4 of them as they travel incredible distances to witness the la...

Richard, an astronomy-obsessed worrier spends his time fantasizing about outer-space and the cosmos, an activity which antagonizes friends and family. One day, he meets Johnny, a handsome Italian man, with an enormous appetite for life, whose idea of...

The Great Year is a compelling documentary that explores the possibility that the fall of ancient civilizations around the globe, and the rise of modern civilization, might be related to our Sun’s motion around a companion star. The film examines evi...

In our terrestrial view of things, the speed of light seems incredibly fast. But as soon as you view it against the vast distances of the universe, it's unfortunately very slow. This animation illustrates, in realtime, the journey of a photon of ligh...

The ancients hid the secrets of their incredible knowledge of astronomy in their temples and palaces, built to align with the sun, on the same day, all over the world. Revealing our species' obsession with the sun, across thousands of years and every...

Three billion miles away a grand-piano-sized spacecraft is speeding through the outer solar system at nearly 1,000 miles per minute. After nearly a decade in space, the New Horizons space probe will have just 86 seconds to complete its primary missio...

Kate Humble and Helen Czerski reveal the inner workings of the sun and investigate why scientists think changes in the sun's behaviour may have powerful effects on our climate....

How's it all gonna end? This experience takes us on a journey to the end of time, trillions of years into the future, to discover what the fate of our planet and our universe may ultimately be. We start in 2019 and travel exponentially through time, ...

Nerdy Jewish Nelly Sue Edelmeister, daughter of a New York mother and Berlin musician in Berlin gets straight A's, except for gym. When she hears her dream prince, actual royal Edouard, a fellow astronomy buff who studies in Luxemburg, patronizes the...

For thirty years, NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has discovered new alien worlds, black holes, and the age of the universe itself; NASA astronauts reveal the secret history of the life-or-death missions to keep this complex machine working....

This film tells the surprising story of how the Allegheny Observatory has been a world leader in the study of the stars since the 1860s. Self-educated, and often facing unrelenting hardships, the people associated with the Allegheny Observatory defie...

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For every child who has ever looked up at the stars and asked, 'What are they?' comes the story of a curious boy who never stopped wondering....

At the edge of our solar system supposedly lies an immense planet. Five to ten times the size of the Earth. Several international teams of scientists have been competing in a frantic race to detect it, in uncharted territories, far beyond Neptune. Th...

A team of international scientists attempt to document the first-ever image of a black hole....