Observatory Open House volunteering

My interest in astronomy came from using telescopes to look at the sky, so I always volunteer to help out at observatory open houses. During my undergraduate years at Carleton College, I was trained to operate Goodsell Observatory's antique 16" and 8" refracting telescopes and gave brief lectures to the waiting public about the object I had set up in the 16" refractor. I also used more modern small telescopes and imaging equipment.

During my time at UCSC, I volunteered at the Lick Observatory open houses, often as one of the only professional astronomers on site. I prepared the public for their viewing experience in the Nickel 40" telescope with short explanations of the target and the telescope.

At Juniata I worked to restart regular public observing nights at the Paul Hickes Observatory, giving the people of Huntingdon a chance to see astronomy in action. I now help run the monthly public viewing nights at Swarthmore's Peter van de Kamp Observatory, on the roof of the Science Center.

The 2024 total solar eclipse

The April 2024 total eclipse crossed northern New England, a few hours' drive from Colby. I organized and led a bus trip that took 40 students from the astronomy department and from my classes up into the path of totality, where we were mercifully greeted by the clearest skies in the country!

Ask an Astronomer

For almost my entire graduate career, I ran the Ask an Astronomer website and email address for the entire UC system. I led a team of other graduate students in answering questions that come in to our official email address.

We received a mix of students doing projects, curious retirees, random people asking what they saw, and everything in between (including some crackpots). The off-the-wall questions kept me thinking on my feet, and I learned a lot researching answers to their decidedly untraditional questions. It is also the best training I have had for fielding questions in a classroom. I also completely redesigned the Ask an Astronomer website to make it more user-friendly and to make our past answers more publicly accessible. Using a WordPress framework, I built pages of archived answers and a simpler question submission form, then trained the incoming members of the website team to maintain it.

Ask an Astronomer public events

I have given several "Ask an Astronomer" talks, in person and online. In them I summarize the most common questions I was asked, share some of the more entertaining emails, and cover the most interesting things I learned in my years on the job. Venues have included the Hiller Aviation Museum and the Santa Cruz Public Library, a UC Observatories virtual event, and Juniata's Astronomy Outreach Week in November 2024.

I also hosted a live online Q&A through UC Observatories, answering questions from an audience of students, parents, and observatory members.

Teaching Python to REU students

From 2020 to 2023 I built and ran the Python bootcamp for the Lamat Institute REU at UCSC, a program that brings community college students into astronomy research. Most arrived with little or no programming background and needed to be productive in a research group within a few weeks, so the bootcamp is hands-on from the first hour: students load real data, clean it, plot it, and fit a model to it. I rebuilt the materials for remote delivery during the pandemic and kept them in use afterward.