Stargazing Challenges (2012)

Shadow Chasers

This feature-length documentary is a portrait of eclipse chasers, people for whom solar eclipses - among nature's more spectacular phenomena – are a veritable obsession. The film follows 4 of them as they travel incredible distances to witness the last total eclipse of the millennium as it sweeps eastward across Europe to India. At various points along the way enthusiasts Alain Cirou in France, Paul Houde in Austria, Olivier Staiger in Germany and Debasis Sarkar in India offer their impressions of the historic event.

Prehistoric Astronomers

Cave paintings and lunar calendars exist in the caves and remains of prehistoric hunters studied recently. What if Prehistoric Man were clever enough to develop in depth scientific knowledge? As unlikely as it may seem, new data tend to prove that Prehistoric Man actually invented Astronomy!

Miniverse

What if you could get behind the wheel and race through space? We scale down the Solar System to the continental United States and place the planets along the way to better appreciate the immense scale of the Universe. See space as never before, with Mars looming over the Freedom Tower and Jupiter towering above the Lincoln Memorial. Join former astronaut Chris Hadfield - a YouTube sensation for his performance of David Bowie’s “Space Oddity” aboard the International Space Station - and his interstellar hitchhikers Michio Kaku and astronomers Derrick Pitts and Laura Danly. It’s a joyride from coast to coast - and from the sun to Pluto.

In the Shadow of the Moon

Archival material from the original NASA film footage – much of it seen for the first time – plus interviews with the surviving astronauts, including Jim Lovell, Dave Scott, John Young, Gene Cernan, Mike Collins, Buzz Aldrin, Alan Bean, Edgar Mitchell, Charlie Duke and Harrison Schmitt.

Searching for Skylab, America's Forgotten Triumph

The first American space station Skylab is found in pieces scattered in Western Australia. Putting these pieces back together and re-tracing the Skylab program back to its very conception reveals the cornerstone of human space exploration.

Worlds of Ice

From the territories of the Arctic to the farthest reaches of the universe, Worlds of Ice shows us the astonishing omnipresence of ice.

New Horizons

A brief visualisation of NASA’s historic spacecrafts Mariner, Pioneer, Voyager, and Dawn, exploring the solar system, culminating in the New Horizons mission.

Passage of Venus

Photo sequence of the rare transit of Venus over the face of the Sun, one of the first chronophotographic sequences. In 1873, P.J.C. Janssen, or Pierre Jules César Janssen, invented the Photographic Revolver, which captured a series of images in a row. The device, automatic, produced images in a row without human intervention, being used to serve as photographic evidence of the passage of Venus before the Sun, in 1874.

From the Atoms to the Stars

An incredible travel through space and time between the walls of the Paris Observatory, which is celebrating its 350th birthday. Place of discoveries such as speed of light or Neptune’s existence, it is still today one of the oldest operating observatories and the greatest hub in the world for astronomy and astrophysics researches, second only to Harvard.

Hubble: Thirty Years of Discovery

For thirty years, NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has discovered new alien worlds, black holes, and the age of the universe itself; NASA astronauts reveal the secret history of the life-or-death missions to keep this complex machine working.

Secrets of the Solar System

New planets are now being discovered outside our solar system on a regular basis, and these strange new worlds are forcing scientists to rewrite the history of our own solar system. Far from a simple story of stable orbits, the creation of our solar system is a tale of hellfire, chaos and planetary pinball. It's a miracle our Earth is here at all.

Splendour of the Heavens

A film about astronomy which also happens to show views of the ancient city of Winchester, before focussing on a particular house in the suburbs with its own observatory.

400 Years of the Telescope

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.

Ariane: A Space Epic

The history of the Ariane rocket is a space epic that has seen Europeans unite and innovate to make a place for themselves in the space race. Faced with Soviet and then American supremacy, men and women from the four corners of Europe have achieved the impossible. Ariane has become a true monument, thanks to the passion of those who dreamed of it and to their tenacity in the face of the various obstacles that stood in their way. This undeniable European success is now at a turning point in its history. The new Ariane 6 program is currently being developed to meet the challenges of tomorrow: will it be able to meet the challenges of a more competitive environment than ever before?

Cosmic Dawn

For over three decades, NASA and an international team of scientists and engineers pushed the limits of technology, innovation, and perseverance to build and launch the James Webb Space Telescope, the most powerful space observatory ever created. Cosmic Dawn brings audiences behind the scenes with the Webb film crew, and never-before-heard testimonies revealing the real story of how this telescope overcame all odds.

Kourou et l'épopée spatiale française

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Searching for Planet 9

At the edge of our solar system supposedly lies an immense planet. Five to ten times the size of the Earth. Several international teams of scientists have been competing in a frantic race to detect it, in uncharted territories, far beyond Neptune. The recent discovery of several dwarf planets, with intriguing trajectories, have put astronomers on the trail of this mysterious planet. Why is this enigmatic planet so difficult to detect? What would a ninth planet teach us about our corner of the universe? Could it help us unlock some of the mysteries of our solar system?

Venus: Death of a Planet

Billions of years ago, Venus may have harbored life-giving habitats similar to those on the early Earth. Today, Earth's twin is a planet knocked upside down and turned inside out. Its burned-out surface is a global fossil of volcanic destruction, shrouded in a dense, toxic atmosphere. Scientists are now unveiling daring new strategies to search for clues from a time when the planet was alive.

Chasing the Equinox

The ancients hid the secrets of their incredible knowledge of astronomy in their temples and palaces, built to align with the sun, on the same day, all over the world. Revealing our species' obsession with the sun, across thousands of years and every continent, this is architectural magic on a cosmic scale.

De Charles de Gaulle à Emmanuel Macron, les gardiens de l'empire

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Beyond Hubble: Launching the Telescope of Tomorrow

Following engineers and scientists on a groundbreaking mission as they build, test and launch the James Webb Space Telescope, the most powerful observatory ever constructed, and discovers the astonishing cosmological mysteries it will investigate.

A New View of the Moon

Wylie carries a telescope through the streets of Los Angeles to offer passersby a new and closer look at a familiar object: the moon. Because everyone needs to keep looking up. Because it is a beautiful and wondrous sight to behold the body of the moon.

The City Dark

When filmmaker Ian Cheney moves to New York City and discovers skies almost completely devoid of stars, a simple question – what do we lose, when we lose the night? – spawns a journey to America's brightest and darkest corners. Astronomers, cancer researchers, ecologists and philosophers provide glimpses of what is lost in the glare of city lights. Blending a humorous, searching tone with poetic footage of the night sky, what unravels is an introduction to the science of the dark, and an exploration of the human relationship to the stars.

Nostalgia for the Light

In Chile's Atacama Desert, astronomers peer deep into the cosmos in search for answers concerning the origins of life. Nearby, a group of women sift through the sand searching for body parts of loved ones, dumped unceremoniously by Pinochet's regime.

Journey to Palomar, America's First Journey Into Space

The film traces the story of the Chicago-born astronomer George Ellery Hale, considered the father of astrophysics, as he struggles personally and professionally to build the greatest telescopes of the 20th century at the Yerkes and Mount Wilson Observatories, and finally the 20-year effort to build the million-pound telescope on Palomar mountain beginning in the 1930s. Hale's observatories revolutionized our understanding of the universe.

TimeScapes

Stunning slow-motion and timelapse cinematography of the landscapes, people and wildlife of the American South West.

Mauna Kea: Temple Under Siege

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.

Mars: a Traveller's Guide

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Baikonur, Earth

Over the centuries only few caravans dared to cross the northern route of the silk road that today lies in the territory of Kazakhstan. In this portion of Asian desert there was no place to build a majestic city nor anything else worth fighting for. Until in 1955 the Soviet government realised that those lands, far as they may be from the rest of the World, were just one step away from the Universe.

The Lebanese Rocket Society

Lebanon's brief flirtation with space travel in the 1960s becomes a poignant metaphor for the Arab world's utopian dreams in this riveting documentary.

The Secret Life of the Sun

Kate Humble and Helen Czerski reveal the inner workings of the sun and investigate why scientists think changes in the sun's behaviour may have powerful effects on our climate.

Timelapse of the Future: A Journey to the End of Time

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.

Cosmis Flows: The Cartographers of the Universe

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!

The Farthest

The captivating tales of the people and events behind one of humanity's greatest achievements in exploration: NASA's Voyager mission.

The Lucy Mission: Origins of the Solar System

For two and a half years we followed the scientific team of the NASA Lucy Mission a mission that will unveil the origins of the Solar System and shared with them the many challenges they had to overcome such as a countdown to launch on time the building of the huge solar arrays or a pandemic.

Planets of the Sun

An Educational Favorites VHS from the NATURE SERIES featuring Leonard Nimoy

Our Century

A man paves his own way to his own soul through an intellectual quest, tragedies of nations and personal drama. The road moving through the cosmic distances is a flight into one's internal world. This flight and this drama are revealed in this philosophical film-poem.

Twinkl

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.