Chambliss Amateur Achievement Award

Please join me in congratulating one of our prolific Planet Hunters, Daryll LaCourse (aka Nighthawk Black), who received the Chambliss Prize for Amateur Astronomy. Woo-hoo! The award was announced at the American Association of Astronomy meeting on January 6th 2016.

Daryll is the second Planet Hunter to receive the Chambliss Amateur Achievement award, which goes to a person not employed in the field of astronomy in a professional capacity, who is resident in North America. The key factor in judging nominations is that the work contributes to the advancement of the science of astronomy.

The citation reads: Daryll LaCourse is a dedicated and talented amateur astronomer who has made significant contributions to exoplanet research as a leading member of the Zooniverse Planet Hunters program. Through painstaking examination and independent reanalysis of Kepler data, he has discovered several new exoplanet candidates, more than 100 previously unknown eclipsing binary systems, and other notable, enigmatic variable stars. He is an energetic and productive collaborator with many professional astronomers. He has coauthored several scientific publications and was lead author on a paper with more than a dozen professional astronomers as co-authors. To quote from one of his letters of support, “If Daryll were a professional astronomer, I would be impressed by the quantity, quality, and creative insight of his work. He is an extraordinary citizen scientist — and highly deserving of the Chambliss award for scientific contributions from amateur astronomers.”