It’s no surprise that many of today’s astronomers are also fans of science fiction. Indeed, it’s how many of us became interested in ‘space’ in the first place. As children we watched Captain Kirk whizzing from planet to planet on Star Trek; hid behind sofas watching the Doctor battling the Daleks; visited the cinema to watch the Star Wars films, Close Encounters of the Third Kind and E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial and read science-fiction novels by Stephen Baxter, Kim Stanley Robinson and others.
It’s true that, for many people, the imaginary sciencefiction worlds visited by the USS Enterprise and the TARDIS are as fascinating, beautiful and real as anywhere visited by Viking, Voyager and Cassini. And on a clear night it’s possible to visit many of these imaginary places with a telescope. Although the planets themselves are made up and don’t actually exist, we can look up into the night sky and see the stars they were placed in orbit around by screenwriters, directors and authors over the years.
THE INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION
Some time in the next couple of years, film star Tom Cruise will fly up to the International Space Station (ISS) to shoot sequences there. But the ISS has already featured in many science-fiction films, including where disaster-prone astronaut Sandra Bullock borrows a Russian Soyuz capsule; where an alien
