This year, the BBC has delayed the fifth Stargazing Live series until March to coincide with Friday’s solar eclipse. Brian Cox and Dara O Briain will be joined at the Jodrell Bank Observatory by Rosetta lead scientist Matt Taylor and none other than Astronaut Buzz Aldrin, who has already arrived in England according to the program’s Twitter stream. As before, this will be very much worth watching and every bit as interesting as in the previous four years. Because there will be a live broadcast of the eclipse on Friday morning, the schedule will be a bit different this time with one additional program.

Wednesday March 18th
• 20:00-21:00 GMT: Episode 1 on BBC2
• 21:00-21:30 GMT: Back to Earth 1 on BBC2

Thursday March 19th
• 20:00-21:00 GMT: Episode 2 on BBC2
• 22:00-22:30 GMT: Back to Earth 2 on BBC2 (note the different time)

Friday March 20th
• 09:00-10:00 GMT: Eclipse Live on BBC1 (note the different station)
• 21:00-22:00 GMT: Episode 3 on BBC2 (note the different time again)
• 22:00-22:30 GMT: Back to Earth 3 on BBC2

Unfortunately the series has, typically for a BBC live production, never been released on DVD, but all episodes from 2011 and 2012 are still up on Youtube at these links:

• Stargazing 2011 – Episode 1 | Episode 2 | Episode 3
• Stargazing 2012 – Episode 1 | Episode 2 | Episode 3

Update: The highlight of this year’s series, the view of the total eclipse from the plane that the Stargazing Live team sent up, has been uploaded by the BBC on its own channel and Episode 1 and the first after-show chat Back to Earth have also been uploaded by somebody else, albeit in a bit of an unusual fashion with a large border around the image. Although if even the ESA links to this video in a Google+ post, it should not be a problem here too!