User talk:Marnieogg

Fred Watson was born in Bradford, England on 14 December 1944, where he lived in Cemetery Road with his mum, dad and grandfather. Later he was joined by a brother John.

He developed early a love of distances, trains and music. These three passions still exist in his life, have continued to grow and become his life and career.

Fred's day job is as the Astronomer in charge of the Australian Astronomical Observatory, 20mins drive from Coonabarabran at Siding Spring. He also participates with the RAVE Consortium, measuring a million stars, at the UK Schmidt Telescope, and is active in developing instrumentation.

These huge project is undertaken mostly at night, unlike his other project - science outreach, for which he has won several awards. In 2003 he received the David Allen Prize and then the 2008 Eureka Award for Science Communication. In combining his love of music and astronomy with the musical genius of Ross Edwards, he won an APRA award in 2008, for the Choral work of the year.

Another award received in 2008, was that of the Queensland literray prize for Science writing, for his third book "Why Is Uranus Upside Down?" (Allen & Unwin) a light-heartedly collection of many of the questions recieved on the ABC Radio slot from a ten year period. It was then released in the UK by Summerdale. His second book "Stargazer, the life and Times of the Telescope" (Allen & Unwin) has been published in Australia as well as, The Netherlands, Korea, America, Japan and most recently proving all things astronomical have an international following.

The book became a tour in 2008 that visited many of the places mention in the book, and celebrated the 200th birthday of the telescope on the 26th September in the Hague, where Hans Lipperhey first requested a patent on his instrument that could magnify. Since then Fred has hosted several journeys overseas to Europe, Scandinavia and the United Kingdom as well as Peru and Chile.

In January 2010, Fred was awarded a Member of the Order of Australia for service to astronomy, particularly the promotion and popularisation of space science through public outreach. Since then, Fred has appeared as a regular guest on the ABC radio with regular slots on 702 with Adam Spencer and Dom Knight as well as Andrew Dunkley - Western Plains and Stephen Martin - ABC Victoria. He is also a featured guest on channel 10's news show The Project.

Few people know of Fred's first book "Binoculars, Opera Glasses and Field Glasses" (Shire Album) besides those with an ardent passion.

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