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many people in the UK Chris Riley experienced his first
total eclipse of the sun through cloudy skies in August
1999 - sharing his experiences from Alderney with viewers
of BBC1. His wonder at the moon began with Apollo in the
1960s, when as a very young child his parents plonked
him in front of the historic TV transmission from the
Sea of Tranquillity. Twenty-six years later he gained
his doctorate in geology at Imperial College and began
to write and broadcast as a science journalist. Chris
worked initially as a reporter and presenter for BBC Radios
4, 5 and the World Service during the mid 1990s and moved
to BBC television in 1997, where he acted as series researcher
for the corporation's highly acclaimed, award winning
BBC2 landmark series The Planets.
In July that year he co-presented
the Apollo 11 30th anniversary celebrations, Moon
Landings Live, for the TV station UK Horizons,
and later in November reported from on board NASA's
Leonid Aircraft mission to study the spectacular
meteor storm.
He cut his teeth producing
and directing on Tomorrow's World for three
years, specialising in Astronomy and space stories.
In 2000 he took some time out from this job to front
a six part Cosmology series for BBC Knowledge. In
2001
he got a second shot at standing in the shadow of the
moon presenting BBCi's coverage of the African Eclipse,
Interactive's historic first live video broadcast.
The following year he became co-presenter of the
Open University's programme Final
Frontier, which was shown monthly on BBC
TWO.
Chris is currently
the principle producer of Walking with Spacemen
a landmark human space flight series for BBC1's 2004
autumn season, a role he describes as "a dream
job!"
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