[4] Mitton was elected to Council of the Royal Astronomical Society 2012–2016, and chairman of the RAS library committee.

[8] Jointly with his wife Jacqueline Mitton, he occasionally gives astronomy lectures on cruise ships.

For his doctoral research in high-energy astrophysics, he studied at the Cavendish Laboratory, Cambridge, under Nobel Laureate Sir Martin Ryle FRS.

His postdoctoral career started under Sir Fred Hoyle FRS at the Institute of Astronomy, Cambridge.

He has completed a large biography of the British astronomer Sir Fred Hoyle (1915–2001), published in April 2005, and reissued in 2011.