Click pictures to enlarge

ELP light one of the world’s largest telescopes for Stargazing Live

Stargazing Live was broadcast on BBC2 on the 3rd, 4th and 5th of January. Professor Brian Cox and Dara O’Briain hosted three days of live stargazing featuring epic images from observatories around the globe.

From their studio base at the world-famous Lovell Telescope at the University of Manchester (one of the world’s largest telescopes), Dara and Brian took viewers on a whistle-stop tour across the galaxy as they identified three of January’s unusual astronomical events – a partial solar eclipse, the Quadrantids Meteor Shower and Jupiter aligning with Uranus

The giant Lovell Telescope at Jodrell Bank is a familiar feature of the Cheshire landscape and an internationally renowned landmark in the world of astronomy.  At 76m high and weighing over 3200 tonnes the production challenge was how to evenly light this huge unconventionally shaped object.

ELP’s Manchester team worked with LD Dave Evans to blanket the whole telescope with light using 4 x Arri 10k tungsten and 4 x Arri 4k HMIs.  There were also a handful of 2.5k HMI’s scattered around to light any outside links.

Indoors, ELP gear lit 2 rooms. The 'control room' and the 'demo room' were lit with Arri 650s, Chromastrips and Encapsulites.

A six man ELP crew came in just one day before the live shoot to rig all the lights. This short lead time  was in order  to minimize disruption to the working observatory and visitor centre. The team included Sinbad, Darren Fletcher, Dan Finnigan, Paul Benson, Peter Griffiths and Adrian Wilkinson. 

In praise of the LD and ELP Manchester crew after the show, Stephen Neal, Director of Stargazing Live said “The show looked great thanks to your lighting. The Lovell has never looked sexier!”

The show achieved an average audience of 3.4million per night for the three nights of the live broadcasts which in BBC2 terms is impressive, especially for a brand new format.