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NEW YORK — Twenty years after the broadcast of “Cosmos,” Carl Sagan’s love letter to the universe, Ann Druyan remembers it all. 

“I have the tape running in my head all the time,” she says. 

This makes a certain amount of sense. Druyan co-wrote the PBS series with Sagan, her astronomer husband; she was there when it became the most popular limited series in the history of public television at that time, when it won Emmy and Peabody awards. 

She saw it become a phenomenon, seen by more than 500 million people in 60 countries. She witnessed how it made Sagan a celebrity, caricatured in cartoons and parodied by comics who seized on his references to “billions and billions” of stars. 

But for those who do not have that tape running in their heads all the time, Druyan has good news: The 13-part series is now available – remastered and digitally restored – on video, with a DVD version that offers subtitles in seven languages and Dolby sound. 

There is a two-CD set, “The Music of Cosmos – Collector’s Edition,” featuring old and new music by Vangelis, composer of the “Cosmos” theme. 

And an hour-long distillation of the greatest moments of original shows, “The Best of Cosmos,” is being shown on PBS stations through March. 

Sagan is not here to see the “Cosmos” comeback; he died in 1996 after a long battle with bone marrow cancer. Druyan has devoted herself to continuing his work, and she says “Cosmos” stands up well “even after 20 of the most eventful years in science.” 

“Some of the haircuts, the style of the trousers – these kinds of things are the only things that dated it,” Druyan says. 

If he had known then what is known now, she says, Sagan could have been more definitive in his discussion of what caused the extinction of the dinosaurs. But when Druyan watched the second episode – her favorite, exploring the origins of life – she found that “there wasn’t a line that had to be withdrawn.” 

“Everything that Carl did was for the record,” she says, noting that he was a guiding force in the effort to place a phonograph record filled with information about Earth on the Voyager spacecraft, in the hope that it might communicate with alien life sometime in the next billion years as it careened through the universe. 

Of course, a Carl Sagan in the new millennium would use a compact disc. But no one has replaced him, and this saddens Druyan. “There is no voice for the wise, long-term use of science and technology,” she says, no “voice for a deep appreciation of the universe.” 

So with this series – filmed in 40 locations around the world over two years – Sagan wanted to distill all he had learned, to show the wonders of the universe and what might be lost if nuclear weapons were unleashed.  

Druyan and Internet entrepreneur Joe Firmage have created Cosmos Studios to follow in Sagan’s footsteps, “awakening one billion people to our relationship with the cosmos by 2005,” according to its charter. One upcoming project: a miniseries based on Sagan’s life. 

On the Net: 

Cosmos Studios: http://www.carlsagan.com