Slow Orbit
Slow, quiet lectures about the planets, the moons, the stars and the space between them, told calmly for the late hours. Space documentaries to fall asleep to.
Episodes
Ring-plane crossing: the moment, twice in every Saturn year, when the rings turn edge-on to the Earth and almost vanish. It happened to Galileo in 1612, and again in March 2025. A planet lighter than water, rings as…
Galilean moons: from Galileo Galilei, who first saw them in January 1610 and took them for four little stars. A storm wider than the Earth that has been turning for nearly two hundred years, a world with nowhere to…
Spherical aberration: when a mirror's edge and centre bring light to slightly different points, every star gets a soft halo. Hubble's mirror had it, by one fiftieth of the width of a hair. An idea written before the…
The red planet, slowly: its rusted dust and blue sunsets, the greatest volcano and canyon in the Solar System, the old riverbeds, two small moons, and the patient machines that still work there. Read by a synthetic…
Our only natural companion: its one face, its seas of old lava, its long days and nights, the tides, the visitors who walked there, and the mirrors they left behind. Read by a synthetic voice. Script written and…
A slow journey outward from the Sun, past each planet in turn, to the edge of the Solar System. Read by a synthetic voice. Script written and fact-checked by the show's…
Also from the late hours: Embers of History · The Quiet Armoury · Myth and Score