The Comet

Man has always sought to seek further afield. After the seafaring explorers of the 16th century, 21st century cosmologists today navigate more celestial oceans, with each mission providing an ever-broader and more impressive cartography of our surroundings. At the avant garde of modern technology, these strange travellers are actually immobile, and their vessels are powerful and spectacular telescopes, on the Earth or in space, constantly widening the limits of our knowledge and giving form to our dreams of infinity. From Hawaii to Australia, via South Africa and China, we set out on an incredible scientific and human adventure to visit the planet's greatest cosmic exploration centres to discover the new challenges involved in understanding the universe. A journey on Earth and in the heavens that will take your breath away!

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 mission: Discover the planet Pluto. This time-sensitive special will showcase the first quality pictures of Pluto that the probe will capture.

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 to the Hawaiian people. For five years the documentary production team Nā Maka o ka 'Āina ("the eyes of the land") captured on video the seasonal moods of Mauna Kea's unique 14,000-foot summit, the richly varied ecosystems that extend from sea level to alpine zone, the legends and stories that reveal the mountain's geologic and cultural history, and the political turbulence surrounding the efforts to protect the most significant temple in the islands: the mountain itself.

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, witnessing the future of Earth, the death of the sun, the end of all stars, proton decay, zombie galaxies, possible future civilizations, exploding black holes, the effects of dark energy, alternate universes, the final fate of the cosmos - to name a few.

Based on more than two decades of systematic research and cross-cultural comparison by comparative mythologist David Talbott, Remembering the End of the World reconstructs a cosmic drama when planets hung in the sky close to the earth–an epoch of celestial wonder giving way to overwhelming terror. This highly visual presentation offers new answers to enigmas that have baffled experts for centuries. Why did every ancient civilization celebrate a former “Age of the Gods”, an age claimed to have ended in earth threatening disaster? What was meant by the lost “Golden Age?” Why did ancient sky worshipers refer to Saturn as “the sun?” Why was Venus worshiped as the “Mother Goddess?” And why did both Old and New World astronomers celebrate the planet Mars as a great warrior whose battles shook the heavens?

In an age when misinformation, alternative facts, and conspiracy theories have become mainstream, UFOs have risen to become one of the most-talked about pop culture phenomena. With all of this noise, how can we expect anyone to know how much of this is true? What is in our skies? What do we know, and how do we know it? And most importantly: Are we being visited?

The Future of the Planet is at stake by biblical brophecy to spaceborn calamity.

Armenian radio-engineer Arevik Sargsyan has struggled throughout her life to preserve ROT54, a giant telescope built by her uncle in the 1980s. But the collapse of the Soviet Union meant that ROT54 was left abandoned for 30 years. Now, Arevik is attempting to take control of the telescope and prove it still works.

In a feast of colours and sounds, Mayan Archaeoastronomy: Observers of the Universe makes a tour of 6 Mayan temples: San Gervasio, Chichen Itzá, Uxmal, Edzná, Palenque and Bonampak where the spectator dives into a Mayan world of knowledge about the importance of the orientations of its temples in relation to the movement of some stars like the Sun, the Moon and Venus.

This series also covers the essential concepts of astronomy: gravity, the light spectrum, Earth's magnetic field, the solar system, the sun, Kepler's Law, the universal law of gravitation, the Doppler Effect, and much more!

Éclipse 73

For more than 50 years, we’ve been unsuccessfully searching for any evidence of intelligent extraterrestrial life. But, the discovery of thousands of exoplanets has meant the hope of finding them is higher than ever. If any messages could eventually be decoded and answered in any far, far away star, it could radically transform our consciousness as species and our place in the universe. A message from the stars changes life on Earth… forever.

A look at the Sun, the star that revolves at the center of the Solar System, and its representation in art throughout history.

Martinique Island, 1974. Inspired by the writings of the Martiniquais poet and politician Aimé Césaire (1913-2008), the dreamer Robert Saint-Rose, known as Zétwall (Star in Creole), aspires to be the first Frenchman to step on the lunar surface.

Documentary about the Griffith Observatory, shown at their Leonard Nimoy Event Horizon Theater

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

A documentary chronicling the history of the telescope from the time of Galileo. Featuring interviews with leading scientists discussing Galileo's first use of the telescope to the latest discoveries in cosmology.

Comets pose one of the greatest threats to life on Earth - a threat that can only be countered if we find out more about them. In 2005, in an audacious bid to do just that, NASA scientists launched a space probe to collide with a comet in the emptiness of deep space. This film follows the amazing story of mission Deep Impact, from its inception through to the final nail-biting moments when the probe and comet Tempel 1 met head-on.

China's FAST (Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope) can detect radio signals emitted tens of thousands of light-years away, and engineers have faced unprecedented challenges in constructing a giant radio receptor nestled amid mountains. From novel technological innovations to architectural challenges, we follow every step that gave birth to the biggest radio telescope ever constructed.

CERN and the University of California-Santa Barbara are collaborating in the search for the elusive substance that physicists and astronomers believe holds the universe together -- dark matter. Where is this search now in the realm of particle physics and what comes next?