Skip to footer

On 'Cosmos,' Patrick Stewart lends voice to Uranus discoverer

Veteran actor Patrick Stewart, who portrayed Enterprise-D Captain Jean-Luc Picard on "Star Trek: The Next Generation," voiced an animated version of astronomer William Herschel, who discovered our solar system's seventh planet. 

|
FOX
Host Neil deGrasse Tyson travels faster than the speed of light in the Ship of the Imagination to journey beyond the event horizon of a black hole in the all-new "A Sky Full of Ghosts" episode of COSMOS: A SPACETIME ODYSSEY airing Sunday, March 30.
  • By Tariq Malik Space.com Managing Editor

Veteran actor and former Starship Enterprise captain Sir Patrick Stewart will warp into Fox's "Cosmos " Sunday night (March 30) as the voice of a famed astronomer who discovered Uranus.

Stewart, who portrayed Captain Jean-Luc Picard on "Star Trek: The Next Generation," is one of two guest actors on the fourth episode of "Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey" hosted by astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson. In the episode, dubbed "A Sky Full of Ghosts," Stewart will voice an animated version of astronomer William Herschel as part of a historical reenactment on the science-themed show.

The latest episode of "Cosmos" will explore the nature of gravity, "journey to the event horizon of a black hole," and travel through time in "A Sky Full of Ghosts," according to a Fox episode guide. [Watch a "Cosmos" Preview of "Sky Full of Ghosts"]

"Neil deGrasse Tyson sets off on the Ship of the Imagination to explore how light, time and gravity alter our perception of the universe," Fox's official episode announcement reads. "Travel back in time to 1809, when astronomer William Herschel (guest voice Stewart) observes how light plays tricks with time and gravity."

William Herschel was a British astronomer in the late 1700s and early 1800s. In 1781, Herschel discovered the planet Uranus during a several nights of telescope observations. He initially campaigned to name the planet "Georgium Sidus" to honor the then King George III, but it was ultimately dubbed Uranus after the Greek god of the sky.

There is another link between Patrick Stewart and Herschel besides "Cosmos." Both men have been knighted. Herschel was knighted by King George III in honor of his discovery and later named court astronomer. Stewart was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 2010.

Another British acting veteran, Julian Ovenden (Charles Blake on "Downton Abbey"), will make an appearance on Sunday's "Cosmos" as Michael Faraday, the 19th century inventor of the electric motor. In "A Sky Full of Ghosts," "Cosmos" will recount how Faraday "discovered invisible fields of force that help him understand how gravity works," according to an episode description.

The 13-episode "Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey" is a 21st-century reboot of the 1980 miniseries "Cosmos: A Personal Voyage" hosted by famed astronomer Carl Sagan. As a young high school student preparing for college, Tyson visited Sagan at Cornell University. That event, which Tyson mentioned in the first episode of the new "Cosmos," will be revisited in Sunday night's "A Sky Full of Ghosts."

"Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey" airs Sunday at 9 p.m. ET/PT on Fox. It will be rebroadcast with extra material on the National Geographic Channel on Monday (March 31) at 10 p.m. ET/PT. Check local listings.

Email Tariq Malik at tmalik@space.com or follow him @tariqjmalik and Google+. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com.

Copyright 2014 SPACE.com, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.
editor@csmonitor.com
Subscribe
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

QR Code to On 'Cosmos,' Patrick Stewart lends voice to Uranus discoverer
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2014/0331/On-Cosmos-Patrick-Stewart-lends-voice-to-Uranus-discoverer
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe