(upbeat music) - For 50 years, "Star Gazers" signed off with the same simple message, "Keep looking up."

18,250 nights marveling at the stars, learning about astronomy and exploring our universe.

In that time, what we've seen and learned about the cosmos has changed dramatically.

So for our 50th anniversary, we're looking back at where we've been, how far we've come, and what's waiting to be discovered next.

And I'm starting right here at Kennedy Space Center as NASA prepares to send its next great space telescope to the skies on a journey that aims to change how we see the universe once again.

But first, let's go back to where it all began.

- [Jack] Greetings, greetings, fellow Star Gazers.

I'm James Albury.

- [Dean] And I'm Dean Regas.

- [Trace] What's up my Star Gazing friends, Trace here?

The best way to get excited about astronomy is to get to know a star.

- [James] We're here to help you find your way around the sky.

- [Jack] To connect with the cosmos, and remember to keep looking up.

(dreamy music) - [Narrator] Funding for this program is brought to you in part by The Batchelor Foundation, A. David Proskow, in memory of Edward D. Johnson.

(pensive music) - Back in 1976, the way we admired the universe looks very much the same as it does today.

You could just step outside and look up.

But there was no internet or smartphone app that could tell you where to look or what that shape was in the sky.

Instead, people needed a guide.

And that was the idea behind "Star Gazers," then called "Star Hustler," a new show that would go on to introduce generations of viewers to the night sky.

And the man at the center of it all was the one and only Jack Horkheimer.

(pensive music) (screen whirring) (lively music) 50 years ago, "Star Gazers" began with a pretty simple idea, give people a few minutes of television and then send them outside to look at the real thing.

In the mid-1970s, Miami's public television station was looking for a short program to fill a late night time slot.

At the nearby planetarium, Jack Horkheimer saw an opportunity.

Behind the scenes, Jack had a small team helping bring the night sky to television.

Bill Dishong was part of that team from the early days, working alongside Jack on the show's scripts and creating the visuals that brought those stories to life.

- The original thing really was Channel 2 contacted lots of agencies around the city looking for a five-minute show.

So Jack said, "Well, let's do something that, you know, to kind of promote really," because the Planetarium was really intended really as a fundraising arm for the museum.

So getting tickets, getting people coming in.

- [Trace] Yeah.

- So that helped significantly.

(lively music) - [Narrator] Some people hustle pool.

Some people hustle cars.

Then there's that man you've heard about, the one who hustles stars.

"Jack Horkheimer: Star Hustler."

(upbeat music) - I just want to be able to turn people onto the wonders of the universe, the beauty of creation, the beauty of the cosmos, the excitement of it.

(upbeat music continues) - [Trace] What started as a local television experiment soon grew beyond South Florida.

- First of all, it was just in South Florida, and then we went statewide and then about two or three years later, we went nationwide.

- [Trace] And television itself looked very different then.

- Boy, oh boy, have we ever got something for you this weekend and Monday morning.

And believe me, you don't want to miss this because every- - [Trace] "Star Hustler," as the show was originally known, often aired at the very end of the broadcast day when television stations actually signed off for the night.

- That's ahead when we.

And I hope that all of you have had a chance to go outside and find all of the star patterns I talked about last week.

- But we did a five-minute version and a 15-minute version aired at sign off 'cause the station shut down at midnight and we used to say, you know, after the show, turn your TV set off and go outside.

Other stations didn't like that because some of them were still on during the night.

They didn't us wanna tell 'em, "Turn the TV set off," but we did.

- Greetings, greetings, fellow Star Gazers and I hope that some of you got out to see the Perseids Meteor Shower last week.

- For a while, there were physical sets and then they went to green screens.

Can you talk a little bit about what that was like?

- Well, initially, it was actually a whole planet system where Jack would walk out through the planets and that was how it originally started.

Had actually a little moving planet with stars in the background and things like that.

But it became so much better to do it on the green screen.

We had so much more ability to think because actually when we started, it was very little electronic image generation.

Much of it was really camera carts.

- [Trace] Yeah.

- [Bill] You know, pictures and things.

- [Trace] Like put right in front of there.

Wow.

- That was kind of the Stone Age of television that you can call it.

- [Trace] That's cool.

- I call my device the Star Hustler El Cheapo Image Isolators and Intensifiers.

And please don't laugh when I describe them to you because to make yourself a pair of the image isolators and intensifiers, all you have to do is save two cardboard tubes around which toilet paper is wrapped.

Now, for absolute beginners, the first time you try them, use only one tube.

Simply put it up and hold it snugly to one eye and close the other eye.

Then look at the star or planet you want to observe through it.

And believe me, you'll be absolutely surprised at how well this simple tube indeed isolates the star planet's image and intensifies not only its brightness, also its color subtleties.

Now, after you become an expert with one tube, try it with both these.

(lively music) (Jack talking indistinctly) - Well, it just happens.

Mercury.

- [Trace] But the technology itself wasn't what made the show memorable.

What also set it apart was the person standing in front of it, the magnetic personality of Jack Horkheimer.

- Finding your way around the sky isn't difficult at all.

You really can use little tricks to help you.

And to show you, we'll use the most famous and oddest star group of them all.

Ready?

We try to give you, a Star Gazer, a taste of the cosmos.

We're like a celestial hors d'oeuvre.

We wanna give you a taste of it and make you hungry for more.

And extend that line.

And it's a legend.

You see, Lepus throughout history has been many things, although Western cultures usually thought of him as a rabbit, even though these stars look about as much like a rabbit to me as I look like Robert Redford.

- [Trace] Jack and his team turned astronomy into something personal.

He wasn't just explaining what was happening in the night sky, he was inviting viewers to experience it with him.

- The Big Dipper is the best star pattern of them all when it comes to finding several bright stars and several constellations, if you know how.

Let me show you.

- We always encourage people to look at what they're seeing and tell us about it.

- Yeah.

- We encourage letters going back, tell us what you saw.

And we just loved whenever it was a lunar eclipse or a solar eclipse or an occultation going on.

We get gobs of letters.

- I love that.

- That's what we've done.

- Now, you won't need a telescope or binoculars to see Halley's Comet, although binoculars will make the comet appear brighter.

Now, to find Halley's- - [Trace] And sometimes the sky gave the show an event big enough to bring thousands of those viewers together.

- To me, one of the neatest things we did was in '85, '86, Halley's Comet came.

- Yeah.

- Halley's comet was a big deal.

- For Pete's sake, get some of your Comet Halley viewing in now.

- Jack got the idea of contacting or actually inviting people.

How many of you saw it last time?

- [Trace] Yeah.

- [Bill] How many people saw it in 1910?

- [Trace] Wow.

- So we actually started the Second Time Around Club.

- Huh.

- Telling people that... And we got letters from, oh, some of the neatest things from people saying that they remember their father took them to see it.

- You'll notice at the head of Halley's Comet, which looks like a bright little star embedded in a fuzz ball.

(Bill) We also did viewing throughout all the Keys.

We had to close the Keys on many nights with nobody else allowed in because we had thousands and thousands of people down there looking at Halley's Comet 'cause you can see it.

- Oh, wow.

(lively music) As the audience grew, the show grew with it.

And over the decades, the tools used to bring the night sky into people's homes changed dramatically.

Suddenly Jack wasn't standing beside a picture of Saturn, he could practically sit on its rings.

And so then when you switched to the green screen, do you think that made the sh... - How did that make the show different?

- [Bill] Well, it freed us up tremendously because the stars looked better.

- [Trace] Yeah.

- [Bill] It was so much easier to come up with full star backgrounds and things electronically and that, like I said, that came out a lot faster and a lot better.

- [Trace] Yeah.

The sets changed, the technology evolved, and eventually the show got a new name.

- [Narrator] Confused about the cosmos?

Can't tell a planet from a star?

Then give us just five minutes and we'll show you what they are.

"Jack Horkheimer: Star Gazer," director of the Miami Space Transit Planetarium, tells you all about the night sky and the biggest show of all, the universe.

- [Trace] "Star Hustler" became "Star Gazer," which later evolved into "Star Gazers" as we know it today.

The faces guiding viewers through the night sky changed as well.

After Jack's passing in 2010, a new generation of hosts stepped in to carry the show forward.

- We're here to help you find your way around the sky.

- It's the magnificent ringed planet Saturn.

- But wait, there's more.

On the night of July 18th, a slender crescent moon will cozy up with Venus and give you a triple header with Jupiter, Venus, and a skinny, slender crescent moon.

- [Trace] Over the years, Star Gazers continued to evolve with new voices, new visuals, and new ways of reaching viewers beyond television.

But through every era, the idea at the heart of the show remained remarkably consistent.

- We had Jack, we had Jim, we had Dean, then Marlene for a while and a lot of other people in between there.

And it actually is just a real person that's excited and truly loves what they're showing 'em.

- Yeah.

- Once you get a foothold in the stars, the sky's the limit.

(Jack speaking indistinctly) - [Trace] 50 years of television has transformed nearly everything about how "Star Gazers" is made, but the reason for making it hasn't really changed at all.

- It's different when whoever's doing it.

- Yeah.

- It's continuously changing, but the silly idea is you're, you're sharing your enthusiasm, your excitement for things in the sky, which is something a lot of astronomy shows don't do.

- Yeah.

- They're more lectures, they're more, you know... (Bill imitating indistinct mumbling) - Yeah.

- But get out there and jump up and down and yell.

I think it's great.

- Yeah.

Yeah.

I sang "I'm a little teapot" 'cause I talk about the teapot.

It's like it helps people remember.

It helps people like see the sky in a, and sort of like you were saying, less cold and away from me.

It's like, "This is mine, this is ours."

- Yeah.

- It's here for everybody.

- And it's something that anybody can do in their backyard.

You don't have to go to a facility, you don't have to go to observatory or go to a plantarium, although we encourage you to do so.

- Please do.

Yeah.

(Bill laughing) - But again, you can do it in your own backyard and the show is always changing.

(lively music) - [Trace] Over the past 50 years, Star Gazer's message to viewers has stayed the same: to be curious, to go outside and to discover the universe for yourself.

- Go outside some night.

Use your imagination and come up with your own star patterns.

Make the stars your own.

(pensive music) - The sky is always changing.

Planets move.

Comets return.

New discoveries reshape what we know about the universe, and every night brings another reason to look up.

Any other star gazing tips?

- Star gazing tips?

Get out there and look.

Just be out there.

Get out there.

Don't lay in bed and read the book.

- Yeah.

- Get outside and look.

- Yeah.

- That's the thing we wanna encourage people to do.

- [Trace] 50 years later, the invitation is still the same: step outside, look up, and see what you can discover.

- Keep looking up.

(lively music) (screen whirring) (upbeat music) - Hi, everybody.

Trace here again, but now I'm at the Grand Canyon.

We recorded this back in June because in June every year is the Grand Canyon Star Party.

It's one of the biggest in the country, and it's so exciting that I get to be here 'cause I've never been to a star party before.

Obviously we're here early 'cause it's daylight out, so we'll have to go talk to some astronomers, see some telescopes, and see just generally what people are doing at the Grand Canyon today.

(lively music) So later tonight here is gonna be a star party.

All of these telescopes are gonna have lines of people looking at the night sky, looking at nebulae, at planets, at stars, at all sorts of different amazing things in their night sky.

And they can do it here because this is a dark sky site.

A dark sky site means that they've followed ordinances and rules to make sure that the sky stays dark.

You can see the Milky Way.

The planets here look brighter than the brightest stars where I live.

It's actually like a little bit mind-blowing to think about, but later tonight, this is gonna be packed.

I'm really excited.

(lively music) Wow.

That is a lot of telescopes.

Yeah, it's a big tripod.

Look at the size of these.

It's got its own rug.

(lively music) The thing I love about this as a hobby is some of these are like kit telescopes.

People make them and they built them to the specs that they need to in order to be able to see what they wanna see.

You know, got these telescopes that they look homemade because they are.

That's... Love that.

(lively music) Wow, that's cool.

(lively music continues) I'm so excited.

(lively music continues) (pensive music) - I'm really happy that you're all here.

You get to see something that when I first came to the Grand Canyon and looked up, I realized there's a lot more to this park than just looking down.

The night sky is incredible here.

(pensive music continues) - Now, tonight, you're gonna see the Milky Way, then it's spectacular.

How many of you have never seen the Milky Way in your life?

Oh.

Okay.

Yep.

So that's gonna change tonight.

(people applauding) (tranquil music) - This is so exciting.

My first star party.

(tranquil music continues) There are so many telescopes here.

It's like as far as you can see.

I mean, I know we came and watched them set up earlier, but wow, it's so cool to see them all just out here like this.

- So I don't wanna delay you guys any longer.

We got dozens and dozens of telescopes with dozens and dozens of amateur astronomers up here to help you and show you around.

Go from scope to scope.

I'd recommend starting up here.

- You're pointing at Jupiter?

- Yup.

- Yup.

- Thank you, guys.

Oh wow.

Every time I look through a telescope, I have trouble like getting my eyeball to see it.

Oh, there it is.

Hello.

- See the bands in here.

- Yeah.

Hi, little bands.

Hi there.

Cool.

What did you see?

What's in there?

- I saw one little tiny galaxy and one big galaxy.

- Two galaxies in one eyepiece?

May I?

- You absolutely may.

That's why I'm here.

- Yeah.

Oh wow.

- You should see a fairly bright pair of stars.

- Yes.

Okay.

- Consider that each one of those two bright stars is literally two top stars.

- Wow.

- So you're looking at four stars.

- Cool.

Have you been here before?

- Yes, this is my second year.

- And so what made you come back?

- Stars.

(Trace laughing) (interviewee laughing) - Well, I think that tracks.

(interviewee laughing) That's a telescope joke.

- Yes.

I got that one real quick.

(Trace laughing) (lively music) - We're visiting family in Prescott and he's a little bit of a backyard astronomer and we just got him a 150-millimeter Dobsonian reflector telescope for Christmas.

- Amazing gift.

- Yeah, it really is.

It's so cool.

- That's amazing.

What do you like to point it at?

- Moon.

- Yeah.

- That's really cool.

- Yeah.

- I like to point it at Jupiter a lot.

(upbeat music) - When you were looking for the North Star that looked like a diamond, what were you singing?

♪ Shine bright like a diamond ♪ ♪ Shine bright like a diamond.

♪ (parent laughing) - Nice.

Little Rihanna.

Gotta get it.

- Yeah, yeah, yeah.

- Gotta get it.

You gotta bring the party to the party.

You know?

- Yes, absolutely.

(Trace laughing) - Guys, look who I ran into.

(Trace laughing) It's Dean Regas from "Star Gazers."

Well, not anymore, but like now you're here as part of an astronomer in residence.

You come to these star parties.

Say hi to the fans.

- Hi, fellow Star Gazers.

Keep looking up out there.

It's good to run into Trace here as well.

And so yeah, I've been doing astronomy here at the Grand Canyon for 10 years and I got introduced to it at this, the Grand Canyon Star Party.

And I was one of the speakers there and just fell in love with it.

Now I come every year.

- That's so awesome.

I mean, what's your favorite kind of thing about coming to this star party?

- Well, there's just so much great energy.

This week we're gonna have 80 telescopes set up, so like that's crazy to get this many stargazers in one place.

And you get the main talk's at 8 o'clock.

You get 500, 600 people going to it.

I just gave a star and constellation talk to I don't know how many people, 200-some people.

- It's gotta be 200 people.

- So there's this mixture of big crowds, great energy, and really fun people that know what they're talking about too.

- Well, thanks a lot.

This was... I mean, it was great to run into you.

Real happy to see.

- Yeah, yeah.

Nice to meet you guys too.

- Yeah.

More "Star Gazer" people.

- We gotta do the salute.

We gotta do the salute.

- Yeah.

Keep looking up.

- Keep looking up.

(Dean laughing) (lively music) (tranquil music) For thousands of years when it came to the stars, all we could really do was look up and wonder, but the stars kept calling.

And as time marched on, we built bigger and better tools that allowed us to see further and know more.

And with each new advancement, we deepened our understanding of the universe.

In the 50 years "Star Gazers" has been on the air, we've learned an incredible amount.

So I sat down with "Star Gazers'" resident astrophysicist, Dr.

Ata Sarajedini, to find out just how much has changed.

(tranquil music) (screen whirring) (lively music) So "Star Gazers" has been on the air for 50 years, which is a huge deal.

Since 1976 when the show started, how has the world of astronomy changed?

- Well, you know, Trace, it's changed quite a bit in two major areas.

One area is the exoplanets or extrasolar planets.

- Yeah.

- We've been able to find thousands of planets around other stars, which in the '70s we had no idea they even existed.

And the holy grail of that kind of search is to find a planet like the Earth around a sun-like star in what we call the habitable zone where water exists in liquid form.

We're still in search of that, but that is the ultimate goal of this kind of work.

The other areas that we made a lot of progress in is in the area of dark energy and dark matter.

So dark matter was known in the '70s, but really people were not sure of its exact nature.

And what is dark matter anyway?

- [Trace] Yeah.

- It's matter that's dark.

(Trace laughing) What is matter?

Well, matter is anything that has gravity, and that's how we detect dark matter because of its gravity.

It's dark because it doesn't give off any light.

How do we know it's there?

Well, by measuring and detecting its gravitational influence on other matter.

We're still looking for dark matter in all different places, but exactly what it is, we're not really sure.

We have a better idea than we did in the '70s, but still, it's an ongoing search.

- Yeah.

- The other area is dark energy.

Now, what is that?

Well, dark energy's a fairly new discovery, has to do with the expansion of the universe.

The universe is expanding even as we speak, but in the past 10 or 15 years, we've realized that the universe is actually accelerating in its expansion, not slowing down, speeding up.

The question is what is causing it to do that?

- Right, it's not gonna speed up unless there's something feeding it, so to say.

- Exactly.

Some kind of energy.

We have no idea really what it is.

All we know is that it's an energy source making the universe speed up and it's caused by the vacuum of space.

Now, what does that?

We really have no idea.

So those are the three areas that, you know, are very different now than they were, say, 50 years ago.

Dark matter, dark energy, and exoplanets.

- Yeah.

Have telescopes or anything changed in that time?

- A lot.

So mostly space telescopes.

Of course, Hubble was launched in 1990.

Spitzer Space Telescope.

Webb was recently launched.

- [Trace] Yeah.

- Ground-based telescopes have taken just a huge leap forward in technology.

At the time, in the '70s, the biggest telescope was four meters, you know, in diameter.

Now, of course, we have 10-meter telescopes.

- Yeah.

- And we're building 30-meter telescopes and 25-meter telescopes.

The bigger the telescope is, the more light you gather, the more light you gather, the fainter you can see, fainter you can see, the further away you can see.

- Yeah.

- The further back in time you can probe the history of the universe.

So a lot has changed in that area as well in the past few years.

- That's the very exciting part.

I mean, all of it is exciting.

- It's exciting.

Right.

- Like, a really huge telescope that can collect so much light, that's very exciting.

It's things we can see.

- It's mostly technology, you know, bigger telescopes mean bigger mirrors, faster computers.

I mean, big data and AI have been a major actually part of that expansion.

And so the question is how much data are we gonna get from these telescopes?

Can we actually process all of it in a reasonable amount of time and use it to understand the universe as a whole?

- Yeah.

When we did the picture of the black hole the first time, I went and talked to some of those data scientists and oh my gosh, it's just huge, you know, petabytes of data that they have to, you know, do inference on and try and figure out exactly what's going on.

- Well, contemporarily, we have the Rubin telescope in Chile, eight-meter telescope, imaging the entire sky every two nights.

- [Trace] Yeah.

- And looking for things that vary over those two nights.

And that data has to be processed in real time to know what happens in two nights, to know what you can follow up on, you know, in the next set of observations.

So AI and data science and data processing are very important in that area.

- Yeah, how would you say for something outside of professional, like amateur astronomy, how's that changed in the last 50 years?

- That's actually changed quite a bit too.

- Okay.

- In two major areas.

One is that now you can go to the store or online and buy a telescope that sets itself up automatically.

- Yeah.

- You know, you buy it, you bring it home, set it up, hit a button, and it figures out what's up in the sky at that time, what direction north is, and what direction to point to look at various objects.

That's the biggest thing.

The other advancement, from my point of view, is the ease of obtaining digital image detectors.

You can take images of the sky, very high precision, very high quality with an off-the-shelf camera, nothing fancy, and you can make color pictures, you know, publish them wherever you want, put them on social media or whatever.

And that's one of the biggest changes in the last 50 years.

And it's not that hard, and it's getting cheaper and cheaper by the minute to be able to afford these, you know, high-tech cameras.

- How would you say then... I think it's funny because some people will be like, "Yeah, those telescopes were so hard to set up."

But for people that don't know, what was it like setting up a telescope?

- Oh, oh, it was... (Trace laughing) Believe me, you know, I'm one of those people who, when I was young, tried to do this all the time.

- Yeah.

- And the difficulty with those telescopes is figuring out, first of all, what direction is north, right?

And then aligning the polar axis of the mount in that direction, and then plugging it into the wall, right?

And having it follow the sky as the Earth rotated to be able to follow a particular object in the sky in real time.

So that's a tricky process to go through if you're not sure exactly what direction's north, how do you align the telescope?

How do you make sure the drive is working properly?

There's all kinds of, you know, little details you have to make sure work properly.

But those things are largely done automatically now with these new generation of telescopes.

So it's amazing.

Very easy.

- So the telescopes have changed.

The astronomy has, or the types of astronomy we can do has changed.

- Right.

- Has the astronomy itself changed?

Are we looking at new things at different things than we used to?

- Well, we're certainly looking at objects that are further away.

Now we have bigger telescopes from the ground, as I said, 10 meters.

We're building a 30-meter telescope from the ground.

And the bigger telescope is the fainter you can see, the further away you can see.

So we're seeing objects that are further away, further back in time, closer to the Big Bang, the origin of the universe.

We were not able to even think about seeing those things 50 or, you know, 40 years ago.

So that is a completely new area of astronomy that wasn't even conceived of, you know, when "Star Gazers" first started.

- Right, when "Star Gazers" started, let's say you wanted to plan an observation, like plan a night of observing.

- Right.

- Would you get out a paper star chart and kind of, "Okay, I wanna see these things and I have to make a whole plan."

- Exactly, and this was before the internet for the most part, right?

There was no asking Google these questions.

- Right.

- You know?

You're right.

You get your star chart out, you figure out what's up in the sky, how faint are these objects you wanna observe, how big a telescope do you need to observe those objects, and just basically plan out your night and figure out what you wanna observe during a certain part of the night and then go from there.

And it was all mostly done by hand, you know?

There was very little computerization involved in planning observations.

- Wow.

- So yeah.

The good old days, you might say.

- Yeah.

(Trace laughing) - So you worked a lot with the Hubble Telescope, which is now just a one of many space telescopes out there.

What was it like working with Hubble when it first launched or when you first worked with it versus, you know, today where we have so much?

- So when it was first launched in 1990, Hubble, of course, had this image problem, if you will, an aberration in the primary mirror that didn't allow it to make the images that we thought it would.

And in 1993, they launched the first servicing mission, which actually fixed the optics in the telescope.

And that was just an amazing achievement.

And I was one of the first people to actually propose to observe star clusters in other galaxies with Hubble.

And I was amazed when the first images first came down from the telescope that they're just so incredibly sharp.

I mean, they looked like images of clusters in the Milky Way.

And yet they were in Andromeda or in the Triangulum Galaxy, 800 kiloparsecs away.

And we could do the same kind of science, you know, on those objects that we could on Milky Way clusters, which at the time was just, you know, a huge leap forward in our understanding of how those clusters formed compared to, say, the ones in the Milky Way.

And that was one of the first papers I wrote where we showed that the clusters, the globular clusters in Triangulum Galaxy (M33), were just a different kind of beast than those in the Milky Way.

And it challenged a lot of the theories of how those clusters form in different environments, in different galaxies.

So that was, you know, an exciting time.

It's still exciting.

Hubble is still going.

I mean, it's still performing at its utmost, it's still oversubscribed by a factor of 10 to 1.

And Webb, of course, is a complement to it.

It's not a replacement for it, it's a complement to it, just the way Roman is a complement to Hubble.

- How do you think the show, how does it stay relevant?

Why are we cool, you know, in your view?

- I think we are cool.

- I think we're cool.

- And the reason is- - So why are we so cool?

- And the reason is because everyone, every person off the street, you know, since antiquity, has wondered about the sky.

- [Trace] Yeah.

- Look up in the sky and you wonder, "What are those things up there, those twinkling lights?"

They're stars.

Some of them are stars, some of them are planets, some of them are galaxies, which we can see with the naked eye in many cases.

People have always wondered about the nature of the universe.

What do they see up there?

And it just seems so distant from us.

And yet at the same time, we are made of the same stuff.

As Carl Sagan always said, "We are made of star stuff."

We're the same material, but yet they're so far away.

And the materials that our bodies are made of, as I said earlier, all the heavy elements, those are made in stars.

The stars and the sun, they're made of the same stuff that we're made of.

How do they get there?

How do they get from there to here?

(Ata laughing) You know?

- Yeah.

- How do they get from the inside of a star to a planet's surface to make life that we are?

I think everyone's fascinated by those really basic questions.

Why?

Because they touch at our origins, where we came from.

What are we made of?

What is our purpose in life?

And how do we study these scientific, you know, phenomena that we're so interested in?

And I like when you say at the end of every show, "Keep looking up."

- Yeah.

- That's so important.

We don't wanna just look down, right?

Or just at ourselves.

We wanna look up in the sky.

What is up there and how are we relevant to all the stuff up there?

I think that's why "Star Gazers" is so relevant and that's why we're cool.

- Yeah, that's why we're cool.

(Ata laughing) (Trace laughing) I agree.

(tranquil music) (screen whirring) (tranquil music) The amazing tools we use to study the universe are extraordinarily powerful, but there's still one tool that almost anybody can use to enjoy the cosmos, our own eyes.

The problem is in many places our night skies are obscured by light pollution, taking away one of the most common and ancient features of humanity, our wonder at the surrounding universe.

Earlier this year at the annual Grand Canyon Star Party, we saw what the night can look like when the darkness is protected and learned why keeping our skies dark matters and not just for astronomy.

(tranquil music) (screen whirring) (lively music) - There are a whole lot of reasons why people get interested in dark skies.

Certainly the longer wavelengths of light, amber, red, are beneficial for animals.

For example, the turtles in Florida, people know about turtle lights where the amber lights prevent the turtles from going inland, instead letting them go out to the sea and chasing the moonlight instead of city lights, right?

And there are many examples in wildlife and even in plants where artificial light is detrimental to them, but it goes deeper.

In 2024, a study found that people who are more connected to the night sky have more positive mental health outcomes.

And then also in 2024, a different study found that people who live under dark skies, not just a quick visit, but those who live under dark skies are more likely to wonder about the universe.

And once you get to wonder- - Wow.

- Now that opens up creativity, ingenuity, discovery.

These are all the things we want in our children as they're growing up.

- Yeah.

- And so these are really intangibles.

And then you go into my field, cultural astronomy, and you see that as the stars have been disappearing in communities around the world, some cultures that still pass on their astronomical information orally are literally losing the ability to share that knowledge with the next generation because they can no longer point out the fainter stars in the night sky.

So that has lasting cultural impact around the world.

- Wow.

And so if we want to accomplish dark skies, not just for all of the benefits you list, but even just for the enjoyment of looking at the stars, right?

Like, the average person, even if they sleep in a very dark room, they might live in a dark sky place and they might wonder and look up at the stars and love it.

How do we achieve that, right?

Like, how do we get that in a city that isn't Flagstaff?

- Yes, it's possible.

So you've probably heard the statistic from a study 10 years ago that about 80% of North Americans could no longer see the Milky Way where they live.

And actually a more recent study has shown that in the last decade since then, the sky around the world has been brightening about 10% each year.

- [Trace] Whoa.

- So doubling in brightness every seven or eight years, which is really a crisis.

And we call that artificial light in the sky that we don't want that blocks the stars, light pollution.

The good news is that it is the easiest form of pollution to fix because as soon as you change the light, it's fixed at the speed of light, right?

Yeah, right.

(Trace laughing) - So how do we do that?

So the single most important thing is to pay attention to the spectrum of the light.

So in the last decade, a lot of communities, even relatively small ones, have been losing their stars because they've transitioned from either high or low pressure sodium to white LEDs.

And that is exactly the opposite direction you want to go.

When you go to white LEDs, it's full spectrum light and that really makes it difficult for us to see the stars in the sky at night because our eyes are more sensitive to blue and green wavelengths of light at night.

So first step is to reverse that, go from white LEDs to amber LEDs.

So step two is to fully shield your lights so that the light goes down onto the ground, which is where it's useful, right?

So if you have a light that isn't shielded and it's going up, down, sideways, 3/4 of that light is just wasted and it's wasted energy.

Also, it's annoying if you are shining that light sideways into your neighbor's bedroom, right?

- Sure, yeah.

We've all had that neighbor.

- Yeah, it's not a good thing.

So the light should go down where it's needed.

That reduces your artificial light pollution by 50%.

- Wow.

- So if you combine those two, we're now at an 88% reduction and we haven't yet reduced the lumens, the output of the light.

- Yeah.

- And so that's literally taking away particles of light that are being emitted and that can scatter into the sky.

So those are the three things.

Pay attention to spectrum, use amber wherever you can instead of white.

Even the warm white is not good enough.

And then secondly, shield it so all the light goes down.

Thirdly, use enough light, not more than you need.

- And it is one of those things where I feel like the more stars people see, the more they get used to seeing them.

The more they make stars their own, as we say on our show, the more stars they want, right?

The more they wanna see the stars.

They can see a little bit of the Milky Way.

Wouldn't it be great if we could see the whole thing?

What do we have to do to do that, you know?

- Exactly.

- You start to get that taste of it as opposed to just looking up at the sky and seeing a star, maybe a planet, and that's it.

- Yeah, I mean, it's not so inspiring to see 30 stars in the sky with a gray background that looks like a cinder block wall.

But when you have a velvet black sky and 1 or 2,000 stars populating it, whoa, and the Milky Way as this cloud across the sky, that's inspiring.

And we see that inspiration all through history, through music and dance and poetry.

I mean, people were just inspired by what they saw above them.

And we can do that too in our modern age where we live, and that's really special.

(tranquil music) And, you know, that poem or song, "Twinkle, twinkle, little star, how I wonder what you are," right?

Little Star is faint star.

We don't wonder what they are if we don't see them.

And if we only have a handful of stars in our sky, we're probably not motivated to be concerned about them or to care about them.

But as you suggested, bringing more of those stars back to our sky can drive that higher curiosity and a thirst to learn more about them.

And who knows, maybe you'll create your own constellations and make the stars your own.

- Yeah.

Let's hope.

(tranquil music) (gentle music) (screen whirring) We've seen just how much astronomy can change in 50 years.

So now let's look ahead.

What could the next 50 years of exploration bring and what might we discover along the way?

I sat down with Kennedy Space Center director Brian Hughes to talk about what's next.

(screen whirring) (gentle music) Obviously we're here at a pretty interesting moment for NASA.

Like you said, the last 50 years have been really important.

How do you see the next 50?

- So NASA was founded to do the impossible.

It was literally, it's the only government agency that was inspired by, "We think we can do this.

Some people say we can't.

We don't know if we can yet.

Here's some money and some people and go see if we can."

But in the 50 years beyond, I think that's what NASA has to keep doing.

So the next 50 years are two parallel tracks of the brightest minds from the country working at NASA, dreaming and working towards the next big thing, and then the core of NASA continuing the work to make sure that America stays at the forefront of today's missions and is prepared for tomorrow's.

- And then when it comes to kind of the next big thing, what excites you most about that?

- What excites me is everything.

Everything about my day.

When I drive through the gate, there's something that's not on the radar that's gonna happen that day.

And then there's the rest of the job, which is just to make sure the people in the facilities here keep up with the demand that's coming from our nation.

And to be a part of history, to be in a position where I ensure that America stays at the lead of space exploration and doing so in a way that honors the civilian nature of NASA.

The most important moment that's ahead in the next 50 years is multi-planetary exploration.

We're obviously here at NASA preparing to go to the moon and develop a permanent moon base, but that's really a proving ground for the things we're gonna have to do in planets beyond.

It's been said many times, humans by nature are explorers.

We see it in everything we do.

When you're a child, you wanna see what's beyond your neighborhood.

And across human history, the most important moments are when we stretch our idea of where we can be and what we can be there.

So it's the most natural thing, I think, for humankind to wanna know more about what's beyond our reach today.

And NASA's role in that is important.

So I hope that people, particularly the American people watching this, are proud and understand that what we're doing is good for this generation and for the generations to come.

- Kennedy Space Center has been at the center of a lot of that, you know, a lot of the excitement, obviously the launches of course, but how has KSC's role changed over that time?

- Kennedy is really evolving into a spaceport.

And when you look ahead in the future, when Starship starts launching, when the heavier rockets that the commercials are developing are here, it's going to be the first place where we launch people beyond the moon.

- Well, I mean, you're just saying, just throwing that out there and it just feels so crazy to think about.

- It's the future.

It's what's gonna happen.

- Yeah.

- We will be multi-planetary and Kennedy's gonna be where that happens.

(pensive music) - But exploring the next frontier isn't only about how far we can travel, it's also about how far we can see.

And one mission launching from Kennedy could transform that view of the universe, NASA's Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope.

(pensive music) - It's got a mirror that's about the same size as the Hubble Space Telescope, so same precision, but the field of view is about 100 to 200 times what the Hubble can see.

So one survey, one month of a survey for the Roman Space Telescope would take the Hubble 100 years to do.

Hubble and Webb are kind of designed to point and stare at stuff for very long periods of time.

The Roman Space Telescope is designed to point, shoot a large, a very wide field and then move.

Point, move, shoot, point, move, shoot, point, move, shoot.

And so it just goes on and on and we can scan the sky very quickly.

- [Trace] That wide view will allow Roman to survey enormous portions of the universe and revisit them again and again.

Instead of only seeing what's out there, scientists will be able to watch the universe change over time.

- There is so much up there and there's not one telescope yet that has this big view of all of the different things that are up here.

And so having that big view allows us to get these collections of galaxies, collections, tens of billions of stars that now are going to add to this gigantic database in science, right?

Science, data's power, right?

Data allows us to move forward.

And so by being able to have so much data of our night sky, we have those crisp, stable views that will allow that type of science to happen.

- [Trace] And buried inside of all that data could be answers to some of the biggest questions we've ever asked about the universe.

How did galaxies form?

Why is the universe expanding the way that it is?

What is dark energy and dark matter?

And how common are worlds like our own?

- The fact that we're gonna be understanding more on planets beyond our solar system and specifically how common solar systems like our own are, that I think that's gonna be transformational.

We have been asking all these questions for decades and that we might be about to answer some of those big questions in the next few years to me is transformational.

- [Trace] And Roman won't just search for distant planets.

It could help scientists tackle an even bigger mystery, one that makes up most of the universe.

- You know, what I find incredible is that these black holes, planets, moons, comets, all of that represents just 5% of the universe.

So just 5%, that 95% else is what we call dark energy and dark matter.

I think that, you know, it's a very human thing.

You know, you can focus on the tree, but we wanna eventually understand the forest.

And I think it's about that.

It's like, you know, zooming out and understanding, you know, it's very human.

It's understanding where we are, how we came to be here.

We're part of a larger system and we're trying to understand that system.

(hopeful music) - [Trace] But perhaps the most exciting part of Roman's mission isn't what scientists expect it to find, it's what they don't.

- One of the things that Roman is gonna do, right?

It's a wide field of view.

It's gonna take all these pictures and then it's also gonna stare into the center of our galaxy and look at these clusters of stars.

And so I think that, getting that view of our universe in motion is incredibly powerful, and I don't know what that's gonna look like, right?

We talk about dark energy and dark matter and a lot of that is, you know, labels for things that we don't know.

And so I legitimately don't know how that picture's gonna change in 10 years, and that is why we do science, right?

That's why we do it.

If we knew the answer, it wouldn't be as exciting.

- Right, yeah.

(hopeful music) History suggests she's right.

Again and again, new telescopes haven't simply answered old questions, they've shown us things we never knew were there and they've given us entirely new questions to ask.

- One of the things that I find so compelling about each of our telescopes are the things that we didn't think about, right?

You start staring at space and Hubble did it, you know, you stared at someone, that deep field where they looked at a part of the sky that nothing was supposed to be in, and there were billions of things in there, right?

And the Webb's discovering these little red dot galaxies that are not the type of galaxies we thought we'd see.

And I have no doubt when Roman starts looking at the sky the way we're gonna look at the sky, people are gonna see things that they just never imagined seeing, and that's what's really exciting to me.

- [Trace] And whatever Roman finds, those discoveries won't belong to just one generation.

Roman's data will be made available to researchers around the world, giving today's scientists and tomorrow's a new view of the cosmos.

(tranquil music) - I think the thing I'm most excited about is handing that data to the next generations that are gonna answer these questions we didn't even know that we needed to answer.

I mean,that's what the large space telescopes have been doing for decades is being able to take that imagery that then, you know, some kid that's, again, in a classroom in Kentucky is going to make the next great discovery that ends up with a Nobel Prize.

It gives me goosebumps.

- [Trace] 50 years from now, the people making those discoveries may be the kids looking up today.

- The things they may work on, it's even hard to conceive.

The speed at which all of this is going, you know, that person could invent a rocket technology that we can't even conceive of today.

It's hard to conceive of what 20 years from now, but I just hope that they are inspired and then when they're inspired, they find an outlet to take that energy and enthusiasm and do the next great thing that we might not even conceive of.

(inspirational music) (screen whirring) (pensive music) - It's T minus one hour until launch.

Roman is on top of that Falcon Heavy rocket out there on the launchpad, and we're at 70% chance that it's gonna happen.

Let's do it.

(tranquil expectant music) (hands rubbing) - Two minutes, 30 seconds.

(tranquil expectant music continues) Okay.

(Trace exhaling) (tranquil expectant music) Less than a minute.

Oh my gosh.

Okay.

(tranquil expectant music) (fingers tapping) (tranquil expectant music) 30 seconds.

(tranquil expectant music) - [Onlooker] And go.

- I should probably think of something inspirational to say, but I'm just excited.

(Trace chuckling) Okay, 15.

(tranquil expectant music) (Trace inhaling) (Trace exhaling) Deep breath.

Nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one.

Here it goes.

Look at that.

(onlookers cheering) Wow, it's so bright.

You can't hear it yet, but you can see it.

That's amazing.

(rocket whooshing) (Trace laughing) (rocket booming) Wow.

(lively expectant music) (rocket booming) (lively expectant music) That's crazy.

(rocket whooshing) (onlookers cheering) (Trace clapping) (pensive music) - [Onlooker] Woo.

- Wow.

(rocket booming) - [Onlooker] Oh yeah.

(pensive music) That's incredible.

(onlookers laughing) - [Onlooker] That was my first Heavy.

(onlooker laughing) (Trace laughing) It's pretty amazing to see how excited everyone is.

(pensive music) There she goes.

Nancy Grace Roman.

50 years of "Star Gazers."

And this telescope is gonna go discover 100,000 new exoplanets, learn about dark matter, dark energy, things that we couldn't even imagine when the show started, which is pretty amazing.

Really cool that we got to be here as well and watch it go off.

It's really emotional.

Well, as we've been saying for the last 50 years, thank you for watching "Star Gazers."

I'm Trace Dominguez.

Keep looking up.

(pensive music) ...the night sky, as seen from the third planet out from the sun, the planet we share, planet Earth.

If you have come to know a little more of the universe than you did before you encountered this video, then please share your knowledge of the wonders of the night sky with a friend.

For if the stars tell us anything, it is that we all belong to the same family who share the same feelings.

And one of the most wonderful feelings of all is that incredible sense of awe and wonder of the magnificence of the cosmos.

And by now, you should know to keep looking up.

(tranquil pensive music) (lively music) - I'm gonna go touch the clock.

(Trace chuckling) (feet pounding) (hands slapping) - Ah!

(Trace laughing) It's real.

I've seen it on TV so many times and I touched it.

That's pretty cool.

(upbeat music) - [Narrator] Funding for this program was brought to you in part by The Batchelor Foundation, A. David Proskow, in memory of Edward D. Johnson.

(lively music)