Stuart Lowe

With a background in radio astronomy, I have worked on ESA's Planck satellite, LCOGT's global network of optical telescopes, co-written a book of astronomical infographics, written Javascript for Aperio Software, and worked with open data for ten years at Open Innovations. I can be found coding, cycling, tooting and other things. I'm based in Yorkshire. Here are some of the other things I've done...

• 2026Woodhouse Moor parkrun stats

  I created a dashboard to look at Woodhouse Moor parkrun stats including finishers, volunteers, first-timers, PBs, a gender breakdown and a finishing time breakdown.

  • javascript
  • SVG
• 2026Hex patch generator

  I created this tool for someone on Mastodon to generate hexagon shaped patches using one of three randomly-generated patterns.

  • javascript
  • SVG
• 2025-Constituency dashboards

  Using the data from the constituency hex maps site, the original versions of these were created by Luke Strange. I took them over when Luke left Open Innovations in mid 2025.

  • data wrangling
  • perl
  • SVG
  • javascript
• 2023-Constituency hex maps

  I created a site to visualise UK constituency-level data on hex cartograms when I was at Open Innovations and have taken it over since Open Innovations wound down in 2026.

  • data wrangling
  • perl
  • SVG
  • javascript
• 2023-horsforth.town

  A simple directory for the town of Horsforth in Leeds. Based on data maintained on Open Street Map.

  • data
  • OSM
• 2022-UK warm spaces finder

  A simple, lightweight, search interface to help people search over 13,000 offers sourced from over 130 directories of warm spaces during the cost of living crisis.
  Source code

  • data
  • scraping
  • regex
  • javascript
• 2021Crossingify

  Create Animal Crossing New Horizons style maps for real world locations.
  Source code

  • data
  • mapping
• 2021Holographic backgrounds

  I created a little Javascript library to make HTML elements look like a shiny surface.

  • css
  • javascript
• 2020Rise and set times

  A single page that shows you the rise and set times for the Sun, Moon and a few planets.
  Source code

  • css
  • javascript
  • svg
• 2020parkrun alphabet challenge

  Find the nearest parkruns to your local parkrun that start with each letter of the alphabet.

  • data
• 2018-2020AAS Time Series JS

  Working for Aperio Software I created interactive plots for online versions of AAS papers.

• 2017A ride along the coast

  A bike ride along the Atlantic coast of Europe from north to south. The total distance was over 11,700 kilometres. View the actual route and donate to MSF.

• 2016inside out in CSS3

  An experiment in recreating the moving thought bubbles from the end-credits screen of the Pixar movie using only CSS.

  • CSS
• 2016Amy's random fish generator

  Randomly generate a fish based on designs created by Amy Evans.

  • javascript
  • SVG
• 2015-2026Open Innovations projects

  A range of projects that I have done as part of my day job.

  • javascript
  • GIS
  • data
• 2015-2024UK TV Panel Show Gender Breakdown

  Using episode-by-episode data to determine how much UK panel shows under-represent women.
  Panel show data

  • data
  • perl
• 2015How Many Planets?

  There haven't always been 8 (or 9 if you are older) planets. The number has varied quite a bit since the invention of the telescope.
  How many planets code

  • javascript
• 2015Leeds Hex Map

  A Leeds ward map made from CSS hexagons. It is a proof of concept. It currently loads data from Leeds Data Mill
  Source code

  • CSS
  • javascript
• 2015-9stuQuery

  jQuery was getting too big for me so I made a lightweight replacement that does most of the DOM manipulation that I want. Heavily inspired by You Might Not Need jQuery.
  Source code

  • javascript
  • SVG
• 2015-2019Seldom Sirius

  I co-presented an astronomy podcast. I have automated the process of generating the MP3s and RSS feeds for the finished audio.

  • perl
  • command-line
  • RSS
  • AWS
  • audio
• 2015UK Hex Map

  A UK constituency map made from CSS hexagons. This is more representative of population than a usual geographic map i.e. Scotland has a similar population to Yorkshire.
  Source code

  • CSS
  • data
• 2014-2015Cosmos: The Infographic Book of Space

  I created a book of space-related data visualisations with Chris North and designer Mark McCormick for Aurum Press. It was published in October 2015. It is accompanied by a repository of interactive infographics.

  • data
  • javascript
  • CSS
• 2014-APOD Search

  A search engine (with cone search) for Astronomy Picture of the Day. Makes use of perl for text parsing. I also extract deep-sky objects from the text, find their positions with lookUP and make a heatmap. Also a Twitter account.
  The data are available as JSON-LD.

  • data
  • JSON-LD
• 2014Hex grid game

  To experiment with hexagons in CSS I made a partially functioning version of a quiz game. You would need to provide your own questions.

  • CSS
  • javascript
• 2014-5In the tyre tracks of Thomas Stevens

  In 2014-5 (130th anniversary of the first round-the-world cycle ride) I rode Thomas Stevens' route from San Francisco to Istanbul.
  US planned vs actual route European planned vs actual route

  • geojson
• 2014Wakefield & North of England Tulip Society

  I automated the cleaning of 85 years worth of transcribed meeting minutes. This involved lots of regex, manual cleaning, and output in a format to load into their WordPress site. I also made a search interface.

  • perl
  • regex
  • search
• 2015Route Rater

  Developing from an idea at the ODI Leeds #hackmyroute hack day. This aims to make a crowd-sourced cycle grading map
  Route Rater code

• 2014Space Telescope Designer

  A web-ification of a schools project originally implemented in Excel by Chris North. Also available in a more advanced mode for older pupils with more options and a more realistic use of risk. In Javascript with Raphael.js and responsive styling.
  Space Telescope Designer code

  • javascript
  • SVG
  • responsive design
  • canvas
• 2014Multi-wavelength Universe

  An interactive astronomical game to teach people how different parts of the electromagnetic spectrum can reveal different aspects of astrophysics.
  Multi-wavelength Universe code

  • javascript
• 2013Messier Bingo

  A bingo game based around the Messier catalogue of astronomical objects. An implementation of an idea by Ed Gomez. Uses jQuery and Raphael.js.
  Messier Bingo code

  • javascript
  • SVG
• 2013Cosmic Microwave Background Simulator

  See how the ingredients of the Universe affect the CMB. Created for the RS Summer Exhibition 2013. Uses jQuery UI, Raphael.js, <canvas> & an FFT library.
  Simulator code

  • javascript
  • canvas
  • SVG
  • FFT
• 2013-25parkweather

  Display the weather history for UK parkrun events. Uses hourly data provided by the MET Office. Created with perl.

  • data
• ~2013Thomas Stevens Blog

  I'm converting the story of the first man to cycle around the world into blog form. Includes embedded OpenCycleMap maps using Leaflet.js as well as images from the British Library. I also created a Thomas Stevens Twitter robot.

• 2012-2021Interplanetary Lobbing

  The Expensive Hardware Lob League covers interplanetary lobbing matches held between planets in the Solar System.

• 2011Star in a Box

  An interactive Hertzsprung-Russell diagram created with Jon Yardley, Haley Gomez and Ed Gomez. Uses jQuery and Raphael.js. Includes support for multiple languages.
  SIAB code

  • javascript
  • SVG
• 2011 Paper Planck

  Make your own paper (or card) model of the European Space Agency's Planck satellite. I designed the templates. Uses actual paper.

  • graphics
• 2010-2Agent Exoplanet

  Interactive site to measure the brightness of a star with a transiting planet. Uses jQuery, <canvas> and Raphael.js.

• 2010-Virtual Sky

  An embeddable HTML5-canvas-based planetarium. I created this for LCOGT and it is freely available for non-commercial use.
  VirtualSky code

  • canvas
  • javascript
• 2009-2021lookUP

  This web service looks up the details of astronomical objects by name. Get results as a webpage, XML, JSON or on your iPhone. It makes Simbad, NED, SkyBot etc more usable.

  • web services
  • data
• 2009-11365 Days of Astronomy

  During 2009, 2010 and 2011 I created the weekly omnibus edition of the podcast using Perl and Sox.

• 2009-Chromoscope

  View the Universe in different colours in your browser. Similar to GoogleSky/WWT but you can download it and run it offline. Uses jQuery.
  Chromoscope code

  • javascript
  • tile-map
• 2007-2023 @apod

  In 2007 I set up the Astronomy Picture of the Day Twitter account to post daily (now twice daily) tweets to APODs.

  • web
  • data
  • APIs
• 2005-2010Jodcast

  A twice-monthly astronomy podcast featuring the latest news, interviews and the night sky. I was a co-founder and helped run it for 4.5 years. I have now retired.

• SpaceBuzz

  A toy I made to display the currently popular tags being used within the astronomy blogosphere.

• .Astronomy

  The most exciting astronomy-internet-related conference of the year! I was on the organising committee for the .Astronomy events in Leiden, Oxford & Heidelberg.

• FITS extraction with Javascript

  Use Javascript to display a FITS file in a web browser.
  jsFITS code

• AVM Javascript Library

  Use Javascript to extract information from the AVM tags in the headers of astronomical jpegs.

• Astronomy Media Player

  My attempt to bring all the astronomy podcasts into one place. It has since been superceded by Portal to the Universe.