Astrobiscuit: The nerd who made the universe fun

In 2017, Rory Griffin—better known as Astrobiscuit—asked his wife for a telescope. She rolled her eyes. “It’ll just gather dust,” she said. But the first night he pointed that Sky-Watcher Mak 90 into the London sky, Jupiter floated into view. Its moons lined up like tiny pearls, and Rory was hooked. Suddenly, astrophotography wasn’t just a hobby—it was a calling.

His first images weren’t glossy or perfect. They were shot with a secondhand security camera and bits of colored plastic. But they had character. When he posted them online, people loved them—not because they looked like NASA’s, but because they captured the raw joy of discovery. A former science TV producer tired of the “voice of god” style documentaries, Rory saw a new path forward. If he wasn’t the expert, he could be the everyman—fumbling, failing, laughing, and eventually succeeding in front of the camera.
For years, hardly anyone noticed. Then came a scrappy video comparing a £600 ($805 USD) telescope to a £6000 ($8050 USD) rig. Viewers finally started paying attention. The real breakout, though, was a film with an irresistible title: Shooting the Blue Lake on the Moon. With an ancient Newtonian telescope, Rory went after one of the Moon’s strangest features, Ina. The video took off—over 2.4 million views and counting. Astrobiscuit had officially arrived.

But fame doesn’t equal fortune. YouTube’s payouts barely covered costs, and Rory had to lean on his growing Patreon community to survive. That community became more than just donors—they were fellow explorers, fueling experiments, rescuing telescope builds, and joining the ride. Together, they turned Astrobiscuit into something more than a channel: a movement to make science messy, funny, and real.

Part physics nerd, part entertainer, Rory brings humor and humanity to a field often wrapped in jargon and mystique. He’s not afraid to show the cock-ups, the clouds, and the broken telescopes. That vulnerability has become his superpower. By laughing at the struggle, he makes space feel accessible—even to those who’ve never touched a telescope.

Today, Astrobiscuit stands at the intersection of science, storytelling, and community, with over 400,000 followers on Youtube. He’s inspired thousands to look up, tinker, and try. And he’s proof that you don’t need a million-dollar observatory to feel the universe reach back at you.

ScopeTrader recently sat down with Rory to get to know the man behind the biscuit—the nerd, the filmmaker, the accidental YouTube star who turned his garden hobby into a worldwide adventure.

ScopeTrader: What first drew you to astrophotography, and when did you realize you wanted to share it with the world instead of just keeping it a personal hobby?

Rory: I never ask for christmas presents but in 2017 I asked Mrs biscuit to get me a telescope. In fact I decided she needed to get me a Sky-Watcher 90mm mak on a virtuoso mount. Mrs. Biscuit was convinced it would end up gathering dust, but when I pointed it at the brightest star visible from our small London garden I saw Jupiter. Wow!  It just bloomin floated there in a sea of blackness with its moons - a whole new mini solar system that I could explore in between doing dad things like loading the dishwasher. The next 2 months I videoed the planet with a ten year old ebay purchased black and white security camera. I used coloured plastic film as my filters. Everyone loved the images even though they were rough… in fact I think the roughness gave them character. I began sharing facebook posts and soon discovered a world of online nerds who were supportive and interested in what I was doing. At that time I worked in tv land as a producer/director of science shows and I was getting disillusioned with the industry so in between jobs me and Rik (who was head of sound at Discovery in London) started making youtube videos. I wanted to do science in a different way. And being as I wasn’t an astrophotography expert that way was to show me struggle and fail and eventually succeed at capturing one of our universe's wonders. For two years almost no-one watched the videos. Then just before lockdown we started to get some traction with “£600 vs £6000: an astrophotography shoot out”.

ScopeTrader: Your video “The Blue Lake on the Moon” really changed things for your channel. How did that idea come about, and did you know it was going to blow up the way it did?

Rory: If it wasn’t for Blue Lake on the Moon astrobiscuit would have gone the way of the dodo. I’d had   modest success with earlier videos so when covid struck I made the decision to take out a £18k (about $24,000 USD) lockdown loan and pursue my youtubing career. I spent 4 months making what I thought would be my opus magnus. The film, “Is this the most important idea since Einstien?” completely upended my understanding of the Universe. I thought it was brilliant but no-one watched it and my opus magnus belly flopped into obscurity. This was a really bad moment. With money running out I bought a big and cheap, 30 year old newtonian and pointed it at one of the moon’s hardest targets, Ina, an ancient lava lake which contained a bit more blue coloured titanium than the surrounding rock. I called the film “Shooting the Blue Lake on the Moon”. Folks had never heard of a blue lake on the moon so they clicked the thumbnail and watched it. To my surprise the film blew up. It wasn’t particularly better than any of my other videos, it just had a catchy title. Simple as that. Whilst the show did brilliantly (it now has 2.4 million views) I also learnt a painful truth. In the first year YouTube sent me just £2k for this blockbuster. So to survive long term as a youtuber you have to get other revenue streams working. Luckily for me  a number of the nerds who watched the video decided to support me - Massivo shout out to my supporters on patreon and youtube as without them I couldn’t carry on.

ScopeTrader: You blend humor and storytelling with some pretty advanced astrophotography. How do you strike the balance between being entertaining and being accurate?

Rory: I have a degree in Physics with Astrophysics from Manchester University and my background is in making science documentaries. I pride myself on using simple words and analogies to explain deep science. The other thing I try to do is make science fun by introducing jeopardy and humour. This is a deliberate attempt to change the way science is consumed. I really like Brain Cox but I can’t stand the BBC’s ‘voice of god’ approach to making science shows. I think treating scientists like all knowing gods is a mistake which drives a wedge between ordinary folks and scientists and ultimately helps fan the flames of conspiracy theories. In truth though I have ramped up the jeopardy too much and some viewers have questioned whether I’m making things up. For instance in one episode I break Betty (a telescope I built with Ceri)  three times in quick succession and I look like a total clutz. I thought it was funny but a lot of viewers simply thought I was an idiot and stopped watching my videos. The truth is a fault in Betty’s design had made her overly fragile and over the course of 3 months I did break her 3 times but it wasn’t quite the cluster fuddle that the video implied. So in the future I will have to strike a better balance.

ScopeTrader: You’ve done some creative telescope builds and experiments. What’s the wildest or most surprising “backyard hack” you’ve tried that actually worked?

Rory: One lifesaving “hack” stands out. I’d been working on ‘Betty’, an 8 inch Newtonian telescope which I hoped could get close to the resolution of the giant Mayall Observatory which sits atop of Kitt Peak. The basic idea is that by taking this small telescope above a meteorological phenomenon known as the second inversion layer to where the atmosphere is calm Betty would be free of the 2-3 arseconds of blurring created by our wobbly atmosphere and therefore achieve resolutions that big scopes below the inversion layer would be jealous of. Luckily for me my amazing supporters funded a trip to the volcanic island of Tenerife which rises well above the inversion layer. But up the volcano I discovered that Betty’s stars had gone triangular. A classic case of astigmatism. Often this occurs when the front mirror clamps push down too hard on the primary mirror.  Betty had had her front mirror clamps removed and we had stuck her primary mirror directly to the primary mirror cell. Annoyingly the cold temperatures up the volcano shrank the aluminium cell which in turn bent Betty’s mirror out of shape. People had generously paid good money to see what Betty could do  and I simply wasn’t going to be able to deliver. It was a massive cock up. I felt terrible. The hack saved the day. With my return flight looming I found a surprisingly big DIY store on the island and bought "extreme 10 kg Scotch fix mounting tape (3mm thick)”. I was hoping the thick mounting tape would act like a form of suspension between the contracting aluminium mirror cell and the mirror. It worked beautifully. If you have triangular stars then you should try this. Betty’s stars are now perfect and she really proved herself to be a terrific scope.

ScopeTrader: Astrophotography can look glamorous in final images, but what’s the most frustrating part of the process that people don’t see on YouTube?

Rory: Gosh, where to begin! Most of my videos require me to build some kind of ‘new’ telescope set up. Initially I wanted to show all the ’cock ups’ in my videos but it turns out so many things go wrong that if I did that the videos would end up being 12 hours long! 2023 was particularly painful as the UK was pretty much clouded out all year long which meant there were no clear nights to test my builds before shooting the video. Inevitably having spent 4 hours travelling from London to a dark site the new build wouldn’t work. It could be power issues, software updates, dew problems… and then I’d be clouded out for another 2 months.  I mean the whole process is just so frustrating and painful. But when it works I do love it and the working bits along with a smattering of the pain is what folks see in the videos.

ScopeTrader: You’ve built a big community around your channel and Discord. What’s the best story you’ve seen come out of that, maybe someone inspired to start imaging who never thought they could?

Rory: Discord was something I really focused on in lockdown. It's a great platform for connecting nerds online. I’ll always be grateful to the many friends I made when we first set it up.  There are too many to count examples of how the server has helped turn noobs into nerds. If I may, I'd really like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who helped with the server in the past and those who are making it work now. To begin with, it was folks like me (seasoned nerds) trying to shepherd the thousands of younger nerds who joined the server. Since lockdown many of us old school nerds have drifted away and younger nerds now do a terrific job running it. I would particularly like to thank the admins Ben Godson and Ryan Fav and their incredible mods. It's these guys and gals and the goodly nerds on the server who have helped so many. Now when I meet younger nerds they tend to know the server rather than me or my videos!  Like I said I have drifted away from the server recently because I need to focus on revenue streams but I do plan on getting back to running the server’s community astrophotography collective known as the BAT (Big Amateur Telescope). And fingers crossed that day is coming.

ScopeTrader: If money and logistics were no object, what would your ultimate telescope and mount setup look like? Where would you put it?

Rory: This is an easy one. I’d build a 24 inch F4 newt on an servo motor powered equatorial fork mount armed with top notch encoders and put it  on a 4x4 truck of some kind which has been modified to hydraulically level itself and open up from the top to reveal the telescope inside. A bit like a road version of SOFIA. Yeh, my ultimate observatory is big and portable and has the potential to climb volcanoes!

ScopeTrader: You’ve filmed from some remarkable dark-sky spots like La Palma. What was the most awe-inspiring moment you’ve had under a truly dark sky?

Rory: Well I’ve  had some pretty special moments up both Tenerife’s and La Palma’s volcano. It's so dark up there that my pupils open out fully and weirdly that makes it not seem dark at all. The starlight lights the ground. It's surreal. Then I go all zen and feel like little old me is at one with the universe. I actually get that feeling even in the UK sometimes. Once up a welsh mountain there was this magical pink hue in the air and I felt overcome with wonder. Turns out the pinkness was due to the aurora borealis which I only realised when I took a long exposure photograph. Oh and in Devon when I pointed my binoculars at Andromeda galaxy, wow, I felt like it would drop right onto my head and my knees went wobbly. Even in London I get a buzz when the planets are lined up and I can briefly comprehend how the Earth is flying round the sun between our planetary neighbours.

ScopeTrader: With smart telescopes, AI processing, and even citizen science projects growing, where do you see amateur astrophotography heading in the next decade?

Rory: I think the future for astrophotography is exciting. We’ve already had a massive leap in the amateur’s abilities thanks to CMOS sensors. And right now even modestly skilled amateurs are able to get cracking shots with smartscopes. Those of us who consider ourselves true nerds are going to have to step up. I suspect AI will help manufacturers produce scopes that are faster and sharper, so we will have better tools to play with.  AI is also helping non coders write software and this should be a big boost to amateurs too. I can see this really helping in community astro projects. For instance I’ve struggled to find software to combine deep space lucky imaging data from multiple telescopes which is something I need for my community BAT project. I suspect that soon a nerd will come along who understands the problem and with the help of AI be able to write software that can crack it. And when you think of all the thousands of  other nerds solving their astro problems with the help of AI then it feels like we could be on the cusp of a massive shift in the amateur nerds capabilities. Not only that but hard to understand scientific papers can be interpreted by AI giving us non professors a fighting chance of understanding what the professional nerds are going on about and we can use that knowledge to shoot completely new and more extreme targets. I’m thinking of galaxy filaments, Einstein rings and all sorts of fancy stuff. So the future looks bright. I think we’re going to be able to boldly go where no amateur has gone before.

ScopeTrader: When you look back at your work - whether it’s an image of Andromeda or a quirky video, what do you hope people take away about our place in the universe?

Rory: You’ve literally said it, I want folks to get a sense of our place in the Universe. I want them to come on a journey with me and not only discover but also comprehend a new bit of  Universe in every video. Well at least that's the aim of my main channel “astrobiscuit”. I’m actually thinking of starting a new channel called “Astrobiscuit - MEGA NERD” which will be for astrophotography geeks. I’ve learnt a lot over the years and I want the new channel to focus on more of the technicalities of astrophotography and hopefully include in depth interviews with fellow experts. It’ll be for all the stuff that's too nerdy to put on my main channel - probably the sort of stuff your readers would enjoy more!