Natalie M. Batalha is professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics at University of California, Santa Cruz (UC Santa Cruz). Prior to her arrival at UC Santa Cruz Dr. Batalha was a research astronomer in the Space Sciences Division of NASA Ames Research Center working on NASA’s Nexus for Exoplanet System Science Coalition, (NExSS). From 2011 to 2017 Dr. Batalha held the position of Co-Investigator and Mission Scientist on the Kepler Mission, the first mission capable of finding Earth-size planets around other stars.

A Northern California native, Natalie Batalha earned her B.S. in physics and astronomy from the University of California, Berkeley in 1989 and her Ph.D. in astrophysics from University of California, Santa Cruz in 1997. She completed a post-doctoral fellowship in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

At UC Santa Cruz, Dr. Batalha’s research pursuits include exploring the diversity of planets in our galaxy using both space-based telescopes like TESS (Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite) and the Webb/JWST (James Webb Space Telescope), and UCSC’s ground-based telescopes like the W. M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii and the proposed TMT (Thirty Meter Telescope). Dr. Batalha is also engaged in multidisciplinary study of planetary habitability.

Dr. Batalha started her career studying young, sun-like stars. After her post-doc in Rio de Janeiro, Batalha returned to California, joining the team led by William Borucki at NASA’s Ames Research Center, Moffett Field to work on transit photometry — a material technology for finding exoplanets.

Batalha served ten years as professor of physics and astronomy at San Jose State University (SJSU). While at San Jose State, Dr. Batalha was Director of the Systems Teaching Institute at the NASA Research Park, which involved creating programs, curricula, and resources for students pursuing careers in space science domains related to the mission of NASA Ames.

After ten years at SJSU, Dr. Batalha moved to the Astrophysics Branch of the Space Sciences Division of NASA Ames Research Center to focus on the Kepler Mission.

Dr. Batalha has history with the Kepler Mission dating to the proposal, design, and funding stages. Indeed she contributed key input to planning the project. Through Batalha’s earlier work with the Vulcan telescope, a robotic ground-based telescope (a Kepler testbed) at Lick Observatory in San Jose, California, she was one of the few people who realized that moving the Kepler’s area of study slightly above the plane of the Milky Way would lessen the problem of light contamination.

From 2011 to 2017, Batalha served as the Lead Scientist for NASA’s Kepler Mission, which discovered 2,700 confirmed exoplanets before the telescope was retired in 2018. As a Kepler team member, Dr. Batalha was responsible for the selection of the more than 150,000 stars the spacecraft monitored. She dealt with various aspects of Kepler’s findings, studying the monitored stars and searching for the planets related to them.

Batalha led Kepler’s first efforts to generate high-reliability catalogs of planet detections. She led the analysis leading to Kepler’s first confirmation, in 2011, of a rocky planet outside our solar system, Kepler-10b.

In 2013, Dr. Batalha was on the taskforce that defined NASA’s Astrophysics Roadmap, “Enduring Quests, Daring Visions: NASA Astrophysics in the Next Three Decades”.

In 2015, Dr. Batlha joined the leadership team of a new NASA initiative dedicated to the search for evidence of life beyond the Solar System, along with scientists from the NASA Exoplanet Science Institute and NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, two research institutes, and ten universities. NASA’s Nexus for Exoplanet System Science Coalition (NExSS), brings teams from multiple disciplines together to understand the diversity of worlds and draw further discoveries, understanding, and knowledge from Kepler data and to characterize which of Kepler’s exoplanets are most likely to harbor life. Batalha also serves on the James Webb Space Telescope Advisory Committee and as a member of the NASA Advisory Council’s Astrophysics Subcommittee.

In November 2017, Dr. Batalha’s Webb project, “The Transiting Exoplanet Community Early Release Science Program”, was awarded 52.1 hours of observation when the the Space Telescope Science Institute selected 13 programs among which to allocate 460 observation hours in the Director’s Discretionary Early Release Science (DD-ERS) on the James Webb Space Telescope.

Among Natalie M. Batalha’s honors and awards are:

• In 2011 a NASA Public Service Medal for her vision in communicating Kepler science to the public and for outstanding leadership in coordinating the Kepler Science Team.
• In 2017, the 2017 Lecar Prize from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics recognizing her “exceptional contributions to the study of exoplanets”. Dr. Batalha is the first NASA employee to receive this honor.
• In 2017, a Smithsonian Ingenuity Award for the Physical Sciences.
• In 2017, Dr. Batalha was named among the “TIME 100: The Most influential people of 2017” for her Kepler work.
• In 2018, the University of California Santa Cruz Alumni Achievement Award, the highest honor bestowed on a graduate of the campus.
• In 2019, election to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, one of the nation’s oldest and most prestigious honorary societies.

Dr. Natalie Batalha firmly believes that in the future her grandchildren will be able to point to a star and say, ‘Look there’s life.’ “This will be a more profound moment even than the Copernican moment which took Earth out of the center of the universe, because it is going to put an end to cosmic loneliness. It is going to fundamentally change what we see when we look up into the night sky.”
 

Dr. Benton is a recently retired family physician with a keen interest in astronomy and human spaceflight since the Apollo missions to the Moon in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

Having grown up on a dairy farm in rural New Zealand, Chris graduated from the University of Auckland as a medical doctor in 1986 before commencing his own private practice in 1991. After 25 years of caring for a semi-rural community just north of Auckland, an opportunity to semi-retire arose in 2014, allowing him to continue his passion for medicine and return to school for a Master's Degree in Astronomy. These studies ignited his long-time interest in astronomy and spaceflight, including researching the hazards of space travel on the human body and mind. Chris completed this degree in 2020, fully retired from medicine in 2021, and now enjoys astronomy and medical communication work, writing articles and speaking on related topics. He has won three writing awards for the Auckland Astronomical Society, including one on the medical aspects of human spaceflight.

As the president of his local Hibiscus Coast Astronomical Society and a committee member of the Auckland Astronomical Society, the latter with over 600 active members, Chris regularly gives talks to both groups on the principles of general astronomy, planetary science, and cosmology. He also frequently talks to various community groups and colleges on astronomical and medical matters of interest to the public. These public speaking events allowed him to continue using his skill of explaining complex ideas in plain language, which he developed and enjoyed during his long and rewarding career in family medicine.

He learned the night sky constellations and many astronomical objects for years with his manually-operated 8-inch Dobsonian reflector telescope. Inspired by the knowledge and pleasure this provided, he bought an 11-inch GoTo Schmidt-Cassegrain for his fiftieth birthday to explore the beautiful New Zealand dark skies to a deeper level. His stargazing activities include transporting the new telescope to the nearby Great Barrier Island, one of the few International Dark Sky Sanctuaries.

Chris has ever-lasting fond memories of the 2017 and 2019 total solar eclipses in the USA and Chile, respectively, through Insight Cruises/Sky & Telescope tours, and is looking forward to their upcoming solar eclipse adventures in 2023, 2024, and 2027.
 

Astronomer and science communicator Dr. Richard Tresch Fienberg was the American Astronomical Society’s Press Officer from September 1, 2009 until his retirement on September 1, 2021.

Born and raised in Los Angeles, California, Rick was locked into astronomy and space exploration as a career in 1968. In that pivotal year, he received a small telescope as a 12th birthday gift, read The Universe: From Flat Earth to Quasar by Isaac Asimov, got caught up in the excitement of the Apollo 8 mission to the Moon, and was riveted by the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Rick majored in physics at Rice University. During the summer of 1976, between his sophomore and junior years, he spent a month at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory as an undergraduate intern with NASA’s Viking mission, working on both the orbiter and lander teams.

While pursuing his doctorate, he worked with Giovanni Fazio and a team of NASA and University of Arizona scientists in developing one of the first digital infrared cameras suitable for use on telescopes. Fazio’s later selection as team leader for the Spitzer Space Telescope’s Infrared Array Camera rose from that team success.

“Even before I finished my Ph.D.,” says Fienberg, “I realized that I enjoyed teaching and writing about astronomy more than I liked doing research.” Accordingly, in September 1986 he joined the staff of Sky & Telescope magazine as an assistant editor. Over the next 22 years Rick served in a variety of editorial and management positions at S&T, including eight years as Editor in Chief and nine as President of parent company Sky Publishing. In 2009 he became the AAS Press Officer.

Rick is an elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). The International Astronomical Union (IAU) — which he served as President of Commission C2, Communicating Astronomy with the Public, from August 2018 to August 2021 — named asteroid 9983 Rickfienberg in his honor. In 2018 NASA awarded him its Exceptional Public Achievement Medal “for exceptional service to the nation in [his] tireless efforts for the public’s safe solar viewing of the 2017 total solar eclipse.”

In 2019, the North East Region of the Astronomical League (NERAL) gave him the Walter Scott Houston Award for his “many years enlightening [amateur astronomers] and educating the public.”

Rick is currently Senior Contributing Editor of S&T. He continues to serve the AAS as Senior Advisor to the Executive Officer and Program Manager of the AAS Solar Eclipse Task Force, helping prepare North America for the October 14, 2023 annular eclipse and the April 8, 2024 total eclipse. He is coauthor with Stephen P. Maran of Astronomy For Dummies, 5th edition, published by John Wiley & Sons in June 2023.

Trained as a professional astronomer, Rick nevertheless remains an amateur at heart, observing the sky and taking astrophotos from his private observatory in central New Hampshire. An inveterate traveler and eclipse-chaser, Rick has visited all seven continents and the North and South Poles. He and his wife Susan — who retired in 2019 from a career in senior health and housing — are the parents of three grown sons and have three young grandchildren.
 

Professor Jeffrey A. Hoffman is a member of the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics at MIT. Dr. Hoffman earned a B.A. (summa cum laude) from Amherst College in 1966 and a Ph.D. in astrophysics from Harvard University in 1971. He subsequently received a M.Sc. in Materials Science from Rice University in 1988. Dr. Hoffman’s original research interests were in high-energy astrophysics — cosmic gamma ray and X-ray astronomy. His doctoral work at Harvard was a balloon-borne, low-energy, gamma ray telescope. He spent one year as a post-doctoral fellow at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, after which he joined the research staff of the Physics Department at Leicester University in the UK (1972–1975), where he worked on several X-ray astronomy rocket payloads and was project scientist for the medium-energy X-ray experiment on the European Space Agency’s EXOSAT satellite. From 1975–1978, he worked at MIT’s Center for Space Research, where he was project scientist in charge of the orbiting HEAO-1 A4 hard X-ray and gamma ray experiment, launched in August 1977. He also contributed extensively to analysis of X-ray data from the SAS-3 satellite, being operated by MIT. His principal research was the study of X-ray bursts, about which he authored or co-authored more than 20 papers.

Dr. Hoffman served in the Astronaut Corps from 1978–1997, making five space flights and becoming the first astronaut to log 1,000 hours of flight time aboard the Space Shuttle. Dr. Hoffman’s assignments included testing guidance, navigation, and flight control systems. He worked with the orbital maneuvering and reaction control systems, with crew training, and with the development of satellite deployment procedures. Dr. Hoffman served as a support crewmember for STS-5 and as a CAPCOM (spacecraft communicator) for the STS-8 and STS-82 missions. For several years, Dr. Hoffman was the Astronaut Office representative on the Payload Safety Panel. Dr. Hoffman was a co-founder of the Astronaut Office Science Support Group. During 1996 he led the Payload and Habitability Branch of the Astronaut Office.

Dr. Hoffman’s spaceflight experience included serving as Payload Commander of STS-46, the first flight of the US-Italian Tethered Satellite System. He played a key role in coordinating the scientific and operational teams working on this project. Dr. Hoffman has performed four spacewalks, including the first unplanned, contingency spacewalk in NASA’s history (STS-51-D; April, 1985) and three spacewalks during the initial rescue/repair mission for the Hubble Space Telescope (STS-61; December, 1993). He worked for several years as the Astronaut Office representative for EVA and helped develop and carry out tests of advanced high-pressure space suit designs and of new tools and procedures needed for the assembly of the International Space Station.

Following his astronaut career, Dr. Hoffman spent four years as NASA’s European Representative, based at the US Embassy in Paris.

In August 2001, Dr. Hoffman joined the MIT faculty, where he teaches courses on space operations and design. Dr. Hoffman is director of the Massachusetts Space Grant Consortium, responsible for statewide NASA-related educational activities designed to increase public understanding of space and to attract students into aerospace careers. His principal areas of research are advanced EVA systems, space radiation protection, management of space science projects, human-robotic exploration strategies, ISRU (in situ resource utilization, i.e., “living off the land”), and space systems architecture. Dr. Hoffman was a member of the MIT/Charles Stark Draper Laboratory Concept Evaluation and Refinement BAA team, optimizing architectures for lunar and Martian exploration. He has been the faculty mentor for numerous teams of MIT students competing in NASA challenges. He led a project to develop an Earth-based flying testbed for a planetary surface hopper exploration system. He is currently Deputy Principal Investigator of the MOXIE experiment on the Mars 2020 Perseverance rover, which is, for the first time, producing oxygen from local Martian resources.

Dr. Hoffman is a member of the International Academy of Astronautics; the International Astronomical Union; the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics; the American Astronomical Society; the Spanish Academy of Engineering; Phi Beta Kappa; and Sigma Xi. From 2008–2018 he held the post of Distinguished Visiting Professor at the University of Leicester, in the UK and is a Professor at the International Space University in Strasbourg, France. He has received honorary doctorates from Leicester University (1997) and Amherst College (1999).

Among his honors and awards are a Woodrow Wilson Foundation Pre-Doctoral Fellowship, 1966–67; a National Science Foundation Pre-Doctoral Fellowship, 1966–71; a National Academy of Sciences Post-Doctoral Visiting Fellowship, 1971–72; a Harvard University Sheldon International Fellowship, 1972–73; and a NATO Post-Doctoral Fellowship, 1973–74. Dr. Hoffman was awarded NASA Space Flight Medals in 1985, 1991, 1992, 1994, and 1996; NASA Exceptional Service Medals in 1988, 1992, and 2002; and NASA Distinguished Service Medals in 1994 and 1997. He was awarded the V. M. Komarov and the Sergei P. Korolyov Diplomas by the International Aeronautical Federation in 1991 and 1994. As part of the Hubble Space Telescope Rescue Team, he was awarded the National Aeronautic Association Collier Trophy in 1993, the Aviation Week and Space Technology Laurels for Achievements in Space in 1993, the American Astronautical Society Victor A. Prather Award in 1994, the Freedom Forum Free Spirit Award in 1994, and the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics Support Systems Award in 1995. In 2007, Dr. Hoffman was elected to the U.S. Astronaut Hall of Fame. In 2011, he was awarded the Centennial Medal from Harvard University’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.
 

Dr. Keivan G. Stassun is Professor of Physics and Astronomy at Vanderbilt University. He earned his Ph.D. in Astronomy as a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. He was a postdoctoral research fellow with the NASA Hubble Space Telescope Program before joining the faculty at Vanderbilt. Professor Stassun’s research on the birth of stars, eclipsing binary stars, exoplanetary systems, and the sun has appeared in the prestigious research journal Nature, has been featured on NPR’s Earth & Sky, and has been published in more than 400 peer-reviewed journal articles. He also serves as host for Tennessee Explorers, a television show highlighting the work of scientists and engineers to inspire the next generation of scientific explorers. Professor Stassun is a recipient of the prestigious CAREER Award from the National Science Foundation and a Cottrell Scholar Award for excellence in research and university teaching from the Research Corporation for Science Advancement. In 2013, he was named a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Dr. Stassun is also a national leader in initiatives to increase the number of underrepresented minorities earning doctoral degrees in science and engineering and has served as an expert witness to Congress in its review of approaches for increasing American competitiveness in these fields. He is also the founding director of Vanderbilt’s Center for Autism & Innovation.

From the Great Courses:
“For thousands of years, stars have been the prime example of something unattainable and unknowable — places so far away that we can learn almost nothing about them. Yet amazingly, astronomers have been able to discover exactly what stars are made of, how they are born, how they shine, how they die, and how they play a surprisingly direct role in our lives. Over the past century, this research has truly touched the stars, uncovering the essential nature of the beautiful panoply of twinkling lights that spans the night sky. The Life and Death of Stars introduces you to this spectacular story in 24 beautifully illustrated half-hour lectures that lead you through the essential ideas of astrophysics — the science of stars. Your guide is Professor Keivan G. Stassun, an award-winning teacher and noted astrophysicist.”