Thanks to his passion for astronomy, ruffled appearance and slightly eccentric manner, Patrick Moore<\/a>\u2019s persona made him a celebrity among the general public and a household name in the UK, where he was the only amateur astronomer most people had heard of, while his books and magazine articles gained him recognition the world over.<\/p>\n Alfred Patrick Caldwell-Moore was born on 4 March 1923, the only child of Captain Charles Trachsel Caldwell-Moore MC, who had served in the army, and Gertrude Moore (n\u00e9e White), who trained as an opera singer in Italy.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Patrick grew up in Sussex \u2013 first in Bognor Regis and later in East Grinstead.<\/p>\n He went to prep school for one term when he was eight, but his formal schooling was limited by the heart problems he suffered up to the age of 16.<\/p>\n While this seemed to have put paid to any thoughts of going to Eton College and the University of Cambridge, it did leave him plenty of time for other pursuits.<\/p>\n He could play the piano by the age of eight and had composed his own Viennese waltz by the age of 10.<\/p>\n At 13, a chance win on the football pools enabled him to buy a xylophone.\u00a0The following year he gave a solo performance on it at a theatre in East Grinstead.<\/p>\n Music was to play a big part in his later life, and he once said that one of his biggest regrets was not taking it more seriously.<\/p>\n Patrick\u2019s interest in astronomy started early.<\/p>\n Hooked at the age of six, after reading GF Chambers\u2019s 1898 book The Story of the Solar System<\/i><\/span>, he resolved to learn a new constellation each night and bought a pair of binoculars to explore the heavens.<\/p>\n Such was his new-found passion that a family friend proposed him for membership of the British Astronomical Association (BAA).<\/p>\n At the age of 11, he became its youngest member and would go on to become its president 50 years later.<\/p>\n Patrick\u2019s first big break arrived in the form of WS Franks, an astronomer who operated the privately owned Brockhurst Observatory in East Grinstead.<\/p>\n Patrick was just 14 years old when he was asked to take over the running of the observatory after Franks\u2019s death.<\/p>\n When he wasn\u2019t showing invited guests the wonders of the night sky, he used its 6-inch telescope to study the Moon.<\/p>\n His observations of lunar craters were so detailed that he wrote them up in a paper and presented them at a BAA meeting.<\/p>\n It was the start of Patrick\u2019s long obsession with the Moon.<\/p>\n Not long afterwards, another trademark quirk was born.<\/p>\n When an optician told him his eyesight was lacking in one eye, he insisted on wearing a monocle rather than a frame with one blank lens.<\/p>\n Despite the heart problems that beset him, he passed school exams with the help of tutors and was due to take up a place at the University of Cambridge when the Second World War broke out.<\/p>\n He joined the RAF, despite lying about his age (he was only 16) and getting a friend to stand in for him at his physical examination.<\/p>\n He rarely spoke about his wartime experiences, but it is known that he was a navigator on bombing raids to Germany, rising to the rank of flight lieutenant.<\/p>\n Astronomy know-how came in handy, enabling him to navigate by the stars using a sextant when the night skies were clear.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n His deepest scar from the war was the death of his fianc\u00e9e Lorna, killed by a German bombing raid in 1943.<\/span><\/p>\n Such was the pain of the tragedy that he never entered into another relationship.<\/span><\/p>\n He once commented in an interview for <\/span>This is London<\/i><\/span> magazine, \u201cI would have liked a wife and family, but it was not to be.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n He did, however, take several godsons under his wing \u2013 some being the children of late friends.<\/span><\/p>\n After the war, he decided to work as a teacher in order to save up enough money to take up his place at Cambridge.<\/p>\n He worked first at a prep school for boys in Woking and then at Holmewood House in Tunbridge Wells.<\/p>\n It was while teaching that he set up a 12.5-inch reflecting telescope at his home in East Grinstead and recommenced his studies of the Moon.<\/p>\n His in-depth lunar knowledge was to serve him well when it came to establishing a new career.<\/p>\n As a boy he\u2019d learned to type by copying a 60,000-word book about the Moon by WH Pickering.<\/p>\n In 1952, he wrote his own book, Guide to the Moon<\/i><\/span>, later renamed Patrick Moore on the Moon<\/i><\/span>, on a 1908 Woodstock typewriter.<\/p>\n The book was such a success that it was reprinted before it was even published, and ran to eight subsequent editions.<\/p>\n With his writing career taking off, he made the decision to leave Holmewood House and penned a series of science fiction novels with titles such as The Master of the Moon<\/i><\/span>; hundreds of books and countless newspaper and magazine articles followed.<\/p>\n By the mid-1950s, Patrick was no stranger to appearing on TV and radio programmes as an expert astronomer.<\/p>\n One television appearance was to prove particularly fortuitous.<\/p>\n During one of the regular outbreaks of flying saucer sightings, he was asked to argue the case against alien visitations in a live BBC TV debate.<\/p>\n The programme\u2019s producer, Paul Johnstone, was impressed by Patrick\u2019s performance and soon sounded him out about being the frontman of a new astronomy TV show in development, called Star Map<\/i><\/span>.<\/p>\n The programme first aired at 10:30pm on 24 April 1957 with a new name, The Sky at Night <\/i>(more on this in our guide How The Sky at Night Night TV programme was born<\/strong><\/em><\/a>)<\/span><\/p>\n The first show was broadcast live from London\u2019s Lime Grove studio, in black and white on the BBC\u2019s only channel, and ran for 15 minutes.<\/p>\n Patrick later said he was grateful to the twin-tailed comet Arend\u2013Roland \u2013 the topic of that first show \u2013 which had reached naked-eye brightness around the date of the broadcast.<\/p>\n To begin with, The Sky at Night<\/i><\/span> was broadcast on a trial basis, but it quickly became a monthly fixture.<\/p>\n One factor in its early success was undoubtedly the burgeoning public interest in all things space-related.<\/p>\n The first-ever artificial satellite, Sputnik 1, was launched into orbit in October that same year and the pace of progress was accelerating rapidly.<\/p>\n The Sky at Night<\/i><\/span> was broadcasting at just the right time in October 1959, when the Russian probe Lunik 3 was orbiting the Moon.<\/p>\n Patrick was able to show viewers the far side of the Moon for the first time.<\/p>\n With The Sky at Night <\/i><\/span>occupying some of his daylight hours, Patrick continued his astronomy by night.<\/p>\n An active member of the BAA, he was at one time director of sections devoted to observing Venus, Mercury and the Moon.<\/p>\n And it was the Moon where his observations proved the most valuable.<\/p>\n Patrick used sketches by himself and another amateur astronomer, Percy Wilkins, to produce a large map of the Moon\u2019s surface (more on this in our guide How Patrick Moore mapped the Moon<\/strong><\/em><\/a>).<\/p>\n So detailed was it that the Russian space agency requested a copy to help it plan its uncrewed Lunik missions.<\/p>\n Patrick\u2019s life became even busier in 1965 when he took a part-time position as director of a new planetarium being set up in Armagh, Northern Ireland.<\/p>\n He made a big impact there, overseeing the completion of the planetarium and turning it into one of the most popular tourist attractions in the area.<\/p>\n He left Ireland in 1968, and he and his mother bought a thatched house in Selsey, West Sussex.<\/p>\n It was a big investment, but the Apollo 11<\/a> Moon mission the following year helped secure the household finances.<\/p>\n Within a month of its landing on the lunar surface, Patrick\u2019s Moon Flight Atlas<\/i><\/span> had sold 800,000 copies.<\/p>\n Patrick was a constant presence on television during the years of the Apollo missions, covering them live with fellow presenter James Burke.<\/p>\n The hours were long and demanding \u2013 on the night of the Apollo 11 landing, he broadcast continuously for over 10 hours (more on this in our guide Patrick Moore\u2019s memories of Apollo 11<\/strong><\/em><\/a>).<\/p>\n He covered the final mission, Apollo 17 \u2013 a spectacular night-time launch \u2013 from Cape Canaveral, having been studio-bound until then.<\/p>\n The cancellation of Apollo was far from the end of Patrick\u2019s forays into live broadcasting.<\/p>\n In the 1970s and 1980s, a series of unmanned NASA probes began exploring the Solar System, and he revelled in a stream of surprises, such as the lifeless surface of Mars revealed by the Viking landings in 1976, and the glorious images from the Voyager<\/a> missions to the outer planets.<\/p>\n![\"""\"](\""https:\/\/images.immediate.co.uk\/production\/volatile\/sites\/25\/2021\/12\/patrick-moore-astronomy-c623316.jpg?quality=90&resize=620%2C413"\" "\\"\"\"\\"\/")
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