It’s that time of year again and the BBC is going to look at the skies: Stargazing Live is coming back for a seventh year and this time it’s completely different. Usually broadcast from the Lovell Observatory in England, the program moves its base of operations to the Australian Siding Spring Observatory for the first time to look at the southern sky.

Brian Cox and Dara O Briain will be hosting again, although there is an announcement from ABC TV that Australian tv presenter Julia Zemiro is going to co-host with Brian Cox. It looks like ABC is going to do three live shows on their own because when the BBC show airs, it’s in the middle of the night – that would mean pulling double duty for Brian! [Update: Sorry, the Australian version is actually airing one week later from April 4 to 6!] The Australian broadcast will also be followed by the Back to Earth after-shows, which the BBC apparently are not doing this time around. Hopefully the BBC is going to broadcast a recording of the Australian shows sometime.

The BBC broadcast airs from Tuesday, March 28 to Thursday, March 30 at 8pm UK time on BBC2. All programs are scheduled to be one hour long without an after-show segment.

Unfortunately the series has, typically for a BBC live production, never been released on DVD, but some episodes from 2011 and 2012 are still online – the rest has sadly been deleted.

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