A KENDAL author is counting his lucky stars after a decision to share his musings with an American radio station saw some of the world's leading authorities on all things astral heap praise on his work.

The work of space-loving scribe Stuart Atkinson, the man behind The Westmorland Gazette's monthly Sky Watch column, has been winging its way around NASA and its European equivalent ESA, after he sent off a Pluto-themed poem to The Planetary Society.

Mr Atkinson, who writes children's astronomy books and recently took up astral poetry as a hobby, has received fan mail from best-selling authors as a result, and is even set to feature in a forthcoming book by top US astronomy writer, Neil deGrasse Tyson.

For full story see the May 4 edition of The Westmorland Gazette.