Department of Astronomy
and Steward Observatory

The Aaronson Committee has met, and it's our pleasure to announce that our 18th Marc Aaronson Memorial Lecturer is Vasily Belokurov of the Institute of Astronomy, in Cambridge, UK. Buell Jannuzi has telephoned Dr. Belokurov, and Dr. Belokurov has accepted with great pleasure. We are shooting for a Fall 2015 talk.

Dr. Belokurov is cited for his long-term work on discovery of Milky Way dwarf galaxies, on being astronomy's premier data miner, for his work on star streams culminating in the Field of Streams, for his work (with students) on the structure and size and density distribution of the Milky Way from BHB stars, on discovering gravitational lenses in the Cassowary Survey, and on data mining to discover metal-poor dIrr galaxies from SDSS imaging (with MMT followup). To put things in perspective, of the sixteen or so ultra-faint galaxies orbiting the Milky Way, Dr. Belokurov has been on the discovery papers of ~10 (mostly as first or second author).

You can learn more about this award in the paragraph below and at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marc_Aaronson_Memorial_Lectureship

The Marc Aaronson Memorial Lectureship was established to honor our Steward Observatory colleague who died tragically in 1987 at the age of 36. In his spirit, we honor an individual, within 15 years of the PhD, who by his or her passion for research and dedication to excellence, during the ten years preceding the award, has produced a body of work in observational astronomy which has resulted in a significant deepening of our understanding of the universe." [Since Marc was 10 years past his PhD at his death and had already been on the cover of Time Magazine, a few years ago we changed the rules to guarantee a younger person.]

Two former Stewardites, Charles Liu (PhD 1996) and Sally Oey (PhD 1995), and current NOAO staff member Knut Olsen, were elected to American Astronomical Society positions: Sally is a Councilor, Charles is Education Officer, and Knut is on the Nominating Committee. For more information, see HERE.

Chris Impey's next Massive Online Open Course is set to begin Feb 15. An article and a Q&A with Chris can be found HERE. While Chris's first MOOC continues, this one has tweaks, such as more videos, quizzes, outside activities and peer-reviewed writing. There are two overarching goals: the first is to teach astronomy to those signed up and have them come away with knowledge and ideas of the richness of what we study; the second is to learn how to do a better job teaching these sorts of very different classes. You can also check out this video link from Chris's Facebook page HERE. The website for the course is HERE, and the Coursera link is HERE. Finally, a recent radio interview with Chris can be found HERE. 

"Lo Que Pasa" recently interviewed University Distinguished Outreach Professor, Dr Don McCarthy of Steward Observatory. This series of interviews asked recently honored professors why they're at the UA. There's a four-minute video HERE. Don is well known for more than two decades of running Astronomy Camp using local telescopes (LINK), and for his presence in the introductory (Gen Ed) classroom and young astronomy majors classroom, and as a faculty fellow in Coconino Hall.

Image Credit: Lo Que Pasa, The University of Arizona