AstroAssembly 2013

Bob Horton is a past president of Skyscrapers, and has been an amateur astronomer, astrophotographer and a telescope maker for over 40 years. He is the Manager of Astronomical Labs and the Ladd Observatory at Brown University.

Ed Turco has been an very active member of Skyscrapers since 1961, holding most of the offices of the organization, conducting telescope making classes and giving many talks to this group and others. He has received many prestigious awards at Stellafane for his hand crafted telescopes, in optical and all other categories. In 2011, Ed was honored for attending his 50th AstroAssembly.

Scott MacNeill is the current Director of the Frosty Drew Observatory and Science Center. Scott develops all Frosty Drew campus and telescope automation, remote presentation frameworks, the frostydrew.org website, and writes about astronomy, including a weekly newsletter on astronomical happenings for the Frosty Drew community. At Brown University’s Ladd Observatory Scott performs the duties of Assistant Astronomer and operates telescopes, supervises student staff, writes astronomy imaging lab manuals, and presents the night sky to visitors. In 2020, Scott took on the role of Astronomy Labs professor at Bryant University, and is a partner in the Rhode Island Sidewalk Astronomers. He is a professional Systems and Software Engineer with roots in the open source community. In addition, Scott serves as the current CEO and Chairs the Frosty Drew Memorial Fund Board of Directors, and is a periodic astronomy correspondent to NPR, WJAR, and The Weather Channel.

Zach Berta-Thompson is the Torres Fellow for Exoplanetary Research at MIT. He works on trying to understand the composition, evolution, and origins of planets that are intermediate in size between Earth and Neptune, with the long term of goal of addressing the question "Does life exist elsewhere in the Galaxy?" Zach recently graduated with a PhD in Astronomy from Harvard University; he first grew interested in astronomy as an undergrad at Princeton University. He we born and raised in Rockford, Michigan.

Robert Gendler is a physician who began doing CCD astrophotography in the early 1990's. He spent his first decade imaging from his home using a portable setup. With advances in internet accessibility and worsening light pollution at home he began imaging remotely in 2005 from observatories in the southwest USA and later in Australia. Robert now spends much of his time mining professional astronomical archives and assembling unique composite images from a wide variety of data sources including the Hubble Space Telescope, Japan's 8.2 meter Subaru Telescope and various ground based professional and amateur systems.

Robert has published Four books on astrophotography including "A Year in the Life of the Universe" (Voyageur Press 2006), "Capturing the Stars; Astrophotography by the Masters" (Voyageur Press 2009), "Treasures of the Southern Sky" (Springer 2011) and most recently "Lessons from the Masters: Current Concepts in Astronomical Image Processing" (Springer 2013).

In 2008, he was featured in the PBS documentary "Seeing in the Dark" by Timothy Ferris. Robert's images have been featured in two national stamp series (United Kingdom 2007, Germany 2011). In 2007 he was the recipient of the "Hubble Award" at AIC. Robert's images have been featured by "Astronomy Picture of the Day" 93 times as of this bio. Robert's work has earned him international recognition and in February 2013 the Hubble Heritage team released a multi-panel mosaic of M106 which Robert assembled for them as a special collaboration between professional and amateur astronomers.

Frank Sienkiewicz is an educational specialist at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory's Science Education Department and project engineer for the MicroObservatory network, since 2001. Prior to this position, he was Curator of Boston University's J. B. Coit Observatory, a small urban observatory from 1988 to 2001. As curator, he managed the observing and teaching facilities within the Department of Astronomy, assisting faculty & students while also responsible for the weekly public observing programs.