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Charlie Warren

has agreed to be our speaker Fri, June 27.

Charlie's presentation topic is "Amateur Astronomy Trends"

Charlie is the managing editor of Amateur Astronomy Magazine. He is an active amateur astronomer who enjoys visual astronomy with a variety of instruments from binoculars to large Newtonians and everything in between. He is an avid astrophotographer who has imaged more than 200 deep sky objects, representing over one thousand hours of imaging time. His current imaging obsession is capturing emission and reflection nebulae with narrowband filters. You can view some of his astrophotography efforts on his web site: http://mstecker.com/pages/appwarren_c.htm
http://www.amateurastronomy.com

http://www.astrofx.com

AND

Title: The Citizen Scientist and Tomorrow's Astronomy
Abstract:
As we move into a brave new era of giant telescopes and giant surveys
the astronomy community is increasingly turning to the citizen
astronomer and asking for help. This is leading to new partnerships
and great new discoveries as amateur astronomers and professional
astronomers collaborate to observe and process data. These
collaborations take many forms, varying from amateur astronomers
making necessary observations to support Hubble Space Telescope
observations to citizen scientist working at their home computer
classifying galaxies in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey.

This talk will discuss the importance of professional - amateur
collaborations today, and many ways you can get involved in the
discoveries of tomorrow.

Websites:
http//:www.astronomycast.com
http://www.starstryder.com

http://www.starstryder.com/cv/

Bio:
Dr. Pamela L. Gay is perhaps best known for her work on the "Astronomy
Cast" and "Slacker Astronomy" podcasts. Combining a solid background
in astronomy with a sexy voice, this young astronomer is working to
bring the cosmos to the masses one download at a time. She also writes
the popular blog, Star Stryder.

Prior to working on Astronomy Cast, Pamela, along with fellow
Slackers, Aaron Price and Travis Searle, was part of "Slacker
Astronomy." This first ever astronomy podcast was the reason for
science becoming a genre in podcast directories. Launching in February
2005, Slacker Astronomy ran for over a year. Parodying everything from
the opening to ABC's Monday Night Football and the Theme to Green
Acres, Slacker Astronomy combined off-beat humor with hard-core
science. Off air, its three personalities produced the first detailed
research papers on what it takes to produce podcasts and how podcasts
encourage people to get actively involved in astronomy.

With Astronomy Cast, Pamela has taken her research in new media in new
directions, exploring the socio-economic backgrounds of podcast
audiences, and exploring in detail what people want to hear. (The
answer to that question would be planets and cosmology, topics
Astronomy Cast has taken on).

A public school kid through and through, Pamela received a B.S. in
Astrophysics from Michigan State University in 1996 and a Ph.D. in
Astronomy from the University of Texas in 2002. Today she teaches at
Southern Illinois University Edwardsville. Her first research love was
(and remains) variable stars, but she has committed scientific
adultery more than once, and has used stolen moments to explore the
secrets of galaxy evolution. She serves on the council of the American
Association of Variable Star Astronomers and is part of the U.S.
organizing team for the 2008 Year of Astronomy. She is also an
instructor for Swinburne Astronomy Online.

Pamela lives in a historic house Southern Illinois with her husband,
two dogs, and a lot of books. When she is not online or teaching, you
might be able to find her gardening or working on DYI projects around
the house.