Introducing Niall Deacon

Niall Deacon is a coordinator at the IAU Office of Astronomy for Education in Heidelberg. Niall did his PhD in Edinburgh and has since held postdoc positions in the Netherlands, USA, Germany and the UK. His research focuses on low mass stars, brown dwarfs and free-floating exoplanets.

In his current job Niall and his colleagues are working to support astronomy educators at primary and secondary level around the world. This includes building a global network of National Education Coordinators (NAECs). If you work in astronomy education and would be interested in becoming a NAEC then follow this link.

Niall is also active in outreach. His popular-level book about exoplanets, Twenty Worlds was recently published by Reaktion Books. He was previously an organizer of Astronomy on Tap Heidelberg, is a former moderator on @astrotweeps and was (way back in the mists of time) the first astrotweep. For the remaining 51 weeks of the year, you can follow Niall at @nialldeacon on Twitter.

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Calling All Astrotweeps – Sign up for the first half of 2015

Demitri, Niall, and I would like to thank both the astrotweep volunteers (past, current, and future for 2014) and followers alike who’ve made @astrotweeps a success this year. It’s been great fun to see this idea we hatched at the 2014 AAS Hack Day take on a life of its own. We hope you’ve enjoyed as much as we have getting a peak each week into the lives of different astronomers and planetary scientists. We’d like to keep this going into 2015.

If you’re interested in taking over the account for a week and haven’t participated before, now’s your chance. Today we’re formally announcing the signup for the first half of 2015. You can see the current schedule with open spots here and  sign up to volunteer on our registration page.  If you already are an astrotweeps veteran and would like to have another go, please do sign up again. The more the merrier, though we’ll give some slight preference to people who didn’t have a turn in 2014.

Spread the word and let’s make 2015 an awesome year for @astrotweeps!