Heather Anita Couper, CBE FInstP FRAS[1] (2 June 1949 – 19 February 2020) was a British astronomer, broadcaster and science populariser.

At the age of seven or eight, she was watching planes in the night sky because her father was an airline pilot when she unexpectedly witnessed a bright green meteor.

At the age of 16, she wrote to British television astronomer Patrick Moore asking if she would be able to take up a career in astronomy, and received the reply "being a girl is no problem at all"!

[6] After two years as a management trainee, with the Peter Robinson fashion store and its Top Shop division (now Topshop), Couper joined Cambridge Observatory as a research assistant in 1969, becoming a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1970.

[11] In 1999, the Royal Astronomical Society and La Société Guernesiaise invited Couper to deliver keynote lectures on the forthcoming total solar eclipse, the first visible from the British Isles since 1927.

Couper also led expeditions to view total eclipses of the Sun in Sumatra (1988), Hawaii (1991), Aruba (1998), Egypt (2006), China (2009) and Tahiti (2010).

In 1986, Couper was aboard Concorde on its first flight from London to Auckland, New Zealand, as the astronomer responsible for showing passengers Halley's Comet while flying at 18,000 metres over the Indian Ocean.

[3] Her major series for BBC World Service Radio ranged from A Brief History of Infinity and The Essential Guide to the 21st Century, to the long-running Seeing Stars (presented with Nigel Henbest).

As producer, Couper's TV credits for Channel 4 include the award-winning Black Holes and Electric Skies, along with the series Universe: Beyond the Millennium.

[19] For her work on the Millennium Commission, as well as her promotion of science to the public, Couper was appointed a CBE in the Queen's Birthday Honours List in 2007.