Peter McMahon

Background

About Peter McMahon

Peter McMahon is an award-winning author, planetarium administrator and journalist who has worked and/or produced content for CTV News, Discovery Channel, the Toronto Star, Canadian Geographic, and more. Peter currently heads-up Kitt Peak National Observatory Visitor Center (and Kitt Peak Visitor Center observatories), as Operations Manager, near Tucson, Arizona. Peter served for nearly 9 years as General Manager of The Jasper Planetarium, which has quickly become one of the fastest-growing attractions in the Canadian Rockies, and won a 2019 ALTO Award in tourism excellence from Travel Alberta. He has also written science features for such publications as Frommer's, CAA Today’s Parent, Air Canada’s in-flight magazine enRoute, and Sky News: The Canadian Magazine of Astronomy and Stargazing, where he wrote the “Wilderness Astronomer” column in each issue for 5 years and served as a contributing editor. In February of 2010, Peter covered health science stories at the Vancouver Winter Games for CTVolympics.ca In 2012/2013, Peter's wrote scripts for the “Life in space” videos filmed in orbit by Chris Hadfield which garnered millions of views on YouTube. Peter has extensive experience consulting and writing for government agencies from the Canadian Space Agency to Parks Canada to Environment Canada and has served as a reoccurring guest science expert on CTV News Channel plus numerous other appearances on CTV and CBC affiliates. Peter has served as president of the Canadian Science Writers' Association and currently sits on the CSWA and a board member of the Canadian chapter of the Space Tourism Society. Peter was first to propose Jasper National Park become a dark sky preserve, and worked with Parks Canada to have it designated the world’s largest astronomy park. He has since traveled to every Dark Sky Preserve in Canada (several dozen.) Peter has spoken on science communication, SEO, and astronomy at countless universities, science centres, conferences, and national parks. He has published three kids' science experiment books – "Ultimate Trains"(2010),"Space Tourism"(2011) and "The Space Adventurer's Guide"(2018) all with Kids Can Press - the most recent of which won the 2019 Lane Anderson Award for kids science writing and was shortlisted for a Red Maple award. In addition to the above, Peter also serves owner and general manager of the mobile Ontario Planetarium and BC Planetariums.