I’m a lifelong amateur astronomer and “Public Outreach Educator” living in the beautiful Lake District in Cumbria, England. I am the author of more than a dozen children’s astronomy and spaceflight books, and have edited or been a consultant on many more. I have written articles on astronomy and spaceflight for many magazines, newspapers and websites, and also am Secretary of my town’s astronomical society, the “Eddington Astronomical Society” (see tab up at the top there).

If you’d like to find out more about my writing, my astronomy “Outreach” work or my activities as an amateur astronomer, just have a browse around this site.

I write several blogs on the internet, but my main one is CUMBRIAN SKY, which is where you’ll find lots of information about what’s happening in the night sky, space missions and much more. There’s more personal stuff on there, too. If you’re not a fan of science fiction, I’d give this blog a miss. Just saying…

If you’re here at my homepage because you’ve been to one of my talks and took home an information slip because you wanted to know more, then CUMBRIAN SKY is where you should go. That’s where you’ll find a special page with links to the websites I referred to during my talk. (If you just want the links but don’t really want to read my blog well, fair enough, here’s where you can find the links… LINKS  but really, you should go take a look at my blog, there’s some good stuff on there! )

I am a devoted follower of the Mars Exploration Rovers, “Spirit” and “Opportunity”, and one of my blogs, “The Road To Endeavour“, is following Oppy’s exploration and study of the huge Endeavour Crater, which she reached after a three year trek south from Victoria Crater . You can find that blog here…

In August last year another, larger and more advanced rover landde on Mars. You can read “Gale Gazette”, my blog following the exploration of Gale Crater by the “Curiosity” rover here…

l also write “astropoetry” – that’s poetry inspired by space exploration and astronomy. My poems are on this blog.

I write science fiction too, which you can find here…

On Twitter? So am I! You can read my Tweets here…

2013 is going to be an incredibly exciting year for amateur and professional astronomers alike, because not one but TWO bright comets are going to be visible in the sky! In March, a comet called PANSTARRS will put on a good show, maybe looking as beautiful as Comet Hale-Bopp did back in 1997. Then, at the end of the year, another comet, Comet ISON, will appear, and this one has the potential to be the most impressive comet for a century, if not for several centuries. You can read my blog all about these comets, “Waiting For ISON“, here…

Right, I think that’s everything. But if you can’t find what you’re looking for, then feel free to drop me a line at STUARTATK@aol.com.

Thanks for dropping by!

Stuart Atkinson