Steven O'Meara
Stephen James O’Meara is an award-winning astronomer and author. He spent his early career on the editorial staff of Sky & Telescope magazine in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He also spent some 15 years as a contributing editor and consultant for Odyssey, a science magazine for young adults. and served as associate editor for GeminiFocus, the quarterly publication of the Gemini Observatory in Hawaii for nearly 15 years. Stephen is currently a monthly columnist and contributing editor for Astronomy magazine, a contributing writer for Fifth Star Labs’s Sky Guide App.
Stephen has received several awards including the Omega Centauri Award for "advancing astronomy through observation, writing, and promotion, and for sharing his love of the sky." He has also been awarded with the Caroline Herschel Award for his greatest visual achievements, including being the first person to sight Halley’s Comet on its 1985 return, the discovery of dark “spokes” in Saturn’s B ring before the Voyager 1 spacecraft imaged them, and being the first person to determine the visual rotation period of the distant planet Uranus. For these accomplishments, the International Astronomical Union named asteroid 3637 O'Meara in his honor.
Stephen has authored or coauthored more than a dozen popular books on astronomy (including his acclaimed Deep-Sky Companion six-book series) and other science topics. Stephen’s scary science book: Are You Afraid Yet: The Science Behind Scary Stuff, was honored as one of the 2010 Young Adult Library Services Association Quick Picks for the Reluctant Young Adult Readers List. He also created and co-authored Star-Gazing with Jack Horkheimer: Cosmic Comics for the Skywatcher, and redecntly co-edited the Oxford Dictionary of Spaceflight.
His latest books:
Night Skies of Botswana, published in 2021 by Penguin Random House
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.co.za/book/night-skies-botswana/9781775847366
and
Mars, published in 2021 by Reaktion Press
http://www.reaktionbooks.co.uk/display.asp?ISB=9781789142204
When he’s not looking at the sky, Stephen enjoys researching volcanic eruptions and has appeared on dozens of TV documentaries ranging from “Ripley’s Believe It or Not” to the Smithsonian Institution’s “Incredible Journey — a celebration of 125 years of discovery at the Smithsonian.”
National Geographic Explorer’s "Volcano Hunters" documents his research into finding a correlation being the Moon’s tidal pull and volcanic activity; the film was selected as one of the year’s best National Geographic documentaries and won the 2002 Golden Eagle Award for excellence in documentary. He recently retired hi contract as a videographer for National Geographic Digital Motion and a contract photographer for National Geographic Image Collection.
Stephen continues his tradition of sharing his love for all things scientific through his writing, editing, and lectures.
