PATRICK MOORE: Sir Patrick Moore, who died last Sunday aged 89, was one of the great scientific communicators of the modern age.
His tenure as host of the BBC programme The Sky at Night was unprecedented in its length and its impact in popularising the sometimes abstruse science of astronomy.
Sir Patrick was never anything other than an amateur, but his work both as a broadcaster and a prolific writer on the subject was universally respected. He did more than anybody else to popularise astronomy as a hobby.
Born in Pinner, Middlesex, in 1923, he was an only child in an upper-middle class family. He developed a heart problem at a young age and was largely home schooled. When he was six he read a book entitled The Story of the Solar System, which changed his life.
Celestial object
At age 11, he became the youngest ever member of the British Astronomical Association and published his first paper on astronomy when he was 13. It was about the moon, the celestial object that he returned to time and time again.
In the days before satellite imaging, Sir Patrick mapped the moon in meticulous detail, returning night after night to his back garden telescope to check his observations.
Although his vocation was apparent from an early age, the second World War intervened.
Sir Patrick bluffed his way into the Royal Air Force, having not only lied about his age, but he also got someone else to impersonate him and take the medical test for him, so that he could conceal his heart problem.
He met or interviewed some of the most important figures in the 20th century.
Perhaps uniquely he interviewed not only Orville Wright, the first man to fly an aircraft, but also Yuri Gagarin, the first man in space and Neil Armstrong, the first man on the moon.
He always stated, however, that his encounter with Albert Einstein in New York in 1940, while on leave from the RAF, was the highlight of his life.
After the war, he continued writing about astronomy until a chance appearance on BBC to dispute the UFO phenomenon made him a television star. He debated his good friend Desmond Leslie, the owner of Castle Leslie in Co Monaghan, on the existence of UFOs.
The Sky at Night, which started in April 1957 was intended to be a short-run thing, but it was extraordinarily fortunate in that it coincided several months later with the launch of Sputnik and the beginning of the great age of space exploration.
He famously missed only one episode of the 705 that were broadcast monthly, in July 2004 when he was struck down with Salmonella.
Sir Patrick had a long association with Ireland. Between 1965 and 1968 he had his first and only full-time post when he became the director of the Armagh Observatory at a time when it was building a planetarium.
He described the opportunity to become director as “too fascinating to refuse”.
He remained on until the distinctive dome was completed in 1968. Although his time in the North was fruitful, he could never understand the sectarian bitterness and left before the Troubles started.
He was also passionately engaged in the campaign that led to the restoration of the telescope at Birr Castle, Co Offaly, which was the largest in the world during the Victorian period.
The telescope had fallen into disrepair from the 1920s. On a visit to Birr Castle in the early 1970s, Sir Patrick used his enormous bulk to tear the ivy from the walls which supported the telescope and urged the Parsons family to restore the telescope.
In 1971 he wrote a book entitled The Astronomy of Birr Castle, which was reproduced in 1981. He was the first subscriber at the establishment of the Birr Scientific and Heritage Foundation which was set up to restore the telescope to old glories.
With his distinctive monocle, the result of poor sight in his right eye, and dishevelled manner, Sir Patrick was the personification of the eccentric Englishman.
In 1942 his fiancée Lorna was killed by a German bomb. The tragedy had a profound effect on him. He never married nor did he forgive the Germans.
It may have accounted for his loathing of the European project and his support of the UK Independence Party.
He lived with his mother Gertrude until she died aged 94 in 1981. His last years were spent alone with his two cats Jeannie and Ptolemy.
Generosity
Stories of his generosity towards other astronomers were legion. Two members of Astronomy Ireland, Dave Grennan and Carl O’Beirnes, stayed in his home on several occasions.
Well-known science broadcaster Leo Enright said he phoned Sir Patrick to look for his advice on how to finish a documentary he was making about the Voyager spacecraft.
The following day Sir Patrick flew to Dublin at his own expense and gave Enright enough material to finish his project.
Queen guitarist and astronomer Brian May, who wrote a book, Bang!: The Complete History of the Universe, with Sir Patrick and Chris Lintott, described him as a “true gentleman, the most generous in nature that I ever knew”.