The Secret Lives of Planets: A User’s Guide to the Solar System – BBC Sky At Night’s Best Astronomy and Space Books of 2019

Paul Murdin has worked as an astronomer in the USA, Australia, England, Scotland and Spain. Since 1963, he has been a research scientist (studying supernovae, black holes and neutron stars), an observatory administrator and a science policy maker for the government and the Royal Astronomical Society in the UK. He has travelled to universities and science centres in capital cities, to mountain-top observatories and to remote launch-pads. He works emeritus at the Institute of Astronomy in the University of Cambridge, England. He has had a secondary career as a broadcaster and commentator for the BBC and CNN, and is a talented lecturer and writer on astronomy. He is identified as the co-discoverer of the first stellar black hole found in our Galaxy, Cygnus X-1. He has been honoured by the Queen with an OBE for his work in international astronomy and for helping make astronomy accessible to everyone.