Jonti Horner is an astronomer and astrobiologist and Professor of Astrophysics based at the University of Southern Queensland. He first became interested in astronomy as a five-year-old, as a result of viewing an accidentally recorded episode of the Sky at Night.

He completed his PhD at Oxford investigating The Behaviour of Small Bodies in the Outer Solar System. This led him to the dark regional skies near Toowoomba and home of USQ’s Mount Kent Observatory, Queensland’s only professional observatory for astronomical and space sciences research and specialised support role for NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS).

Jonti is a passionate science communicator and teacher and takes great pleasure from delving into the mysteries of the cosmos, and the question of life elsewhere.