Hidden Universe

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This is home.

Our very own

corner of the universe.

But stand here on the

surface of Earth and look up.

Hidden out here, in the

limitless reaches of space,

is the story of our past,

present, and future.

For centuries, astronomers

from every corner of the world

have striven to unlock

secrets of the universe.

This is Dr. Jonathan Whitmore,

and I suppose you could say

that he's always

had stars in his eyes.

I have

two great loves in life.

Music and astronomy.

As a kid I dreamt of playing

piano at Carnegie Hall one day,

then flying to some distant

mountaintop to stargaze the next.

But Carnegie Hall

will have to wait,

because I got hooked on

astronomy in a big way.

My very first

glimpse through a telescope

showed that even our closest

neighbors are stunning.

When I saw the moon,

I felt that I could almost

reach out and touch it.

Saturn has her amazing rings

that circle the planet.

The rings alone are

20 times wider than the Earth,

but in some places,

are only 10 meters thick.

And there's Jupiter.

The stormy gas giant.

We have one moon.

At last count,

she had more than 67.

But for me, the most

beautiful object in the sky

is the thing

we're all bound to.

The thing that gives us

warmth and life itself.

The sun.

Our sun is a star,

just like all the other stars

we see in the night sky.

When I found that out,

my mind was made up.

Jonathan's decision

to become an astronomer

led him halfway

around the world,

to one of the highest and

driest places on the planet.

Chile's Atacama

Desert is his launch pad

for a trip to

the edge of the universe.

When people find

out that I'm an astronomer,

they always ask me to point out

what I observe in the night sky.

And the truth is, I can't,

because the things I

study are so far away,

you can't see

them with human eyes.

That's what

I love about science.

It challenges our boundaries

and constantly pushes us forward.

Take Mars, for example.

Not long ago, we thought of it as

just a pale, red dot in the night sky.

Now we can see it in

extraordinary detail.

Starting in 1997,

the Mars Global

Surveyor mapped

the entire surface

of Mars so precisely,

that we could see detail

down to a mile in size.

It revealed huge canyons,

10 times longer

than the Grand Canyon,

and volcanoes three times

taller than Mount Everest.

More recently, NASA sent

the Mars rover, Curiosity.

It's a mobile lab that is

scouring the landscape

for water and

interesting samples.

And from orbit, we are mapping

Mars with incredible precision.

We can now see rocks on the Martian

surface that are barely a foot wide.

These images

of the surface of Mars

aren't some special effect

created for the next

Hollywood sci-fi epic.

This is the real thing.

These images were

taken using HiRISE,

the largest telescope ever

carried on a deep-space mission,

aboard the Mars

Reconnaissance Orbiter.

If you've ever

dreamt of living on Mars,

just come to

the Atacama Desert,

and you'll be amazed by how similar

it is to the Martian landscape.

In the middle of one of

the world's most arid deserts,

the team at ESO have constructed

a place that's full of life.

This is where we live.

In fact, if we ever

colonize another planet,

this might be the kind of

biosphere that we build there.

Sheltered from the

extreme conditions outside,

you'll find an oasis,

with all the comforts of home.

A swimming pool,

a library, a restaurant,

and even a music room

where I can practice piano.

Astronomers from all over the

world are drawn to this place

by their passion

for the stars.

And up the mountain is the

telescope we have all come to use.

It's called the "VLT".

The Very Large Telescope.

So we're not exactly that

great at coming up with names,

but that's exactly what it is.

A very large telescope.

Make that four

very large telescopes.

VLT operator

and mountaineer, Lisa Tura,

is here to prepare

the telescope.

On her days off,

you'll find Lisa scaling the

highest peaks of the Andes.

So she is unfazed by the task

of calibrating these gigantic,

and sometimes

temperamental, machines.

When you

operate the VLT,

you have to treat it

with the utmost care.

One miscalculation

can throw out

an entire night's

observations.

Its instruments

are so sensitive

that even your body's temperature

can affect the readings.

So we need to be

extremely thorough

every time we start it up.

The VLT is one of the biggest

optical telescopes in the world.

It has a 27-foot mirror that

acts like a giant light bucket,

capturing as much

light as possible.

This main mirror

reflects and focuses the

light up to a second mirror,

then down to a third mirror

in the middle of a telescope.

And finally,

into instruments on

the side of the VLT.

Once Lisa

has finished her calibrations,

the VLT can see objects

four billion times fainter

than those detectable

by the human eye.

For me, music will always

play a big part in my life.

But when I'm about to look up

and see distant objects that

no one else has ever seen,

I know I've made

the right choice.

Before

the night's viewing begins,

everyone must

leave the building.

The VLT demands

total darkness.

As I said, temperamental.

Every speck of man-made light

has to be shut out.

Even the tiniest bit could ruin

the observation for that night.

As the Earth spins,

the Milky Way

appears to pass over us,

while the telescopes

twist and turn,

tracking distant

objects in the sky.

Nowhere else in the world can you

see the stars shine as brightly.

On the clearest of nights,

you can see your own shadow,

cast from the light of

millions of distant stars.

And as we explore the heavens,

we have found

the birthplace of stars.

This monstrous cloud of gas

and dust is the Carina Nebula.

It's a star factory,

churning out

thousands of stars,

some of which are the

brightest in our Milky Way.

You could

call it a stellar nursery.

Because in

a nebula like this one,

stars are being formed.

And even though these stars

are relatively young,

they're not exactly small.

And there are a huge

range of star types.

In fact, our own sun would have been formed

in a cloud of gas and dust just like this.

Sometimes, these nebula are named

by the shapes that they seem to make.

Here's one with

a great nickname.

The Snow Angel Nebula.

The blue wings of the snow

angel are actually hot gas,

being illuminated by a huge star

forming in the middle of this hourglass.

The astronomers who named

the War and Peace Nebula

could see a dove

dancing in the gas.

I don't see it myself,

and I'm more interested

in the gigantic stars here.

They're shining hundreds

of thousands of times

brighter than our sun.

But not every

nebula is a stellar nursery.

A thousand years ago,

Arabian, Japanese

and Chinese astronomers

all recorded a strange,

lingering light in the sky,

as bright as the full moon.

They were witnesses

to the death of a star.

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