About Mark Thompson

When not working in TV or Radio shows he is most likely to be writing about it in his regular columns for Discovery News or studying it. Mark's very successful first book ‘A Down to Earth Guide to the Cosmos' was published in January 201 and he is now working on three more books. Mark can also be seen on yahoo.com explaining the peculiarities of weather in a series of on-line films commissioned by Yahoo.

You will often find him zooming in, on or through it as not only is Mark an enthusiastic astronomer but he is also a qualified pilot. Born in Norfolk he has had a fascination with all things in the sky ever since he was a small boy. He loves to visit dark sky sites around the country but he has a special affinity to the Kelling Heath Holiday Park in his home county of Norfolk. The dark skies and consideration of sensitive lighting make the site one of the best places to stargaze in the eastern counties.

Mark has been a contributor on the Sky at Night and The Culture Show and now enjoys bringing the beauty of the night sky down to Earth through many different outlets. His first book ‘A Down to Earth Guide to the Cosmos' presents the universe to the reader in a way never done before. Embracing social networking media, Mark ‘tweets' regularly with tens of thousands of followers and he is now working with a number of agencies on some exciting new projects for the coming years.

At the age of 10 he got his first view through a telescope; Saturn, rings and all, hanging there against a velvet black sky. It was for real, not a picture in a book, another world billions of miles away. It ignited a passion that has stayed with him ever since. As an astronomy populariser, he has been keen to show a new, enthusiastic and fresh face to the public and to that end has for the last 20 years, lectured on a vast array of astronomical subjects from the Moon to Black Holes and the end of the Universe. His research interests have chiefly centred on deep space, the study of stars exploding at the end of their lives and of distant galaxies believed to host super-massive black holes in their cores.

In his quest to show us a new image of astronomers, Mark, who is now President of Norwich Astronomical Society astronomical society, has worked extensively with local media from newspaper, to radio and TV and his articles have been published in Astronomy Now, the national astronomy magazine. His enthusiastic outreach work and contemporary image led him to serving on the Council of the Royal Astronomical Society and speaking at many national events including the National Astronomy Meeting.