SCIES Brings New Staff to Department
Michelle Curtis

The Department of Physics and Astronomy has acquired two staff members who bring experience and talent to the work of SCIES (Sonoma Center for Innovative Education in Science.

Aurore Simonnet began working in October of 2000 as a scientific illustrator. Aurore adds a creative flare to physical science and technical illustrations used for the various education and public outreach programs. From diagrams to illustrations, her skills in graphic design, 3-D animation, and web design contribute a diverse scientific perspective.

Aurore became interested in physics and astronomy as a student. At the University of California, Santa Cruz, she developed an individual major entitled “Physical Science Illustration,” expanding on her strengths as an artist. Aurore built her own curriculum, combining both science classes in physics and astronomy and natural science illustration classes. Alongside her physics professor, Don Coyne, she designed her senior project, which consisted of a large poster of the MILAGRO Telescope (located in Los Alamos) and a triptych of three posters showing the evolution of the explosion of a primordial black hole. The summer after graduating, Aurore worked as an intern for the Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI) League, in New Jersey. She worked on a rendering of their future array of sixteen telescopes. The internship helped improve her skills even more and prepared her to find employment in the field.

Aurore is a native of France who speaks English and French fluently. Aurore recently returned to competitive synchronized swimming, a sport in which she has been active for almost thirteen years. Her website is at http://www.imaginearts.com/simonnet.

Dr. Phil Plait is very excited about working on programs that educate people about astronomy and high-energy astronomy. He spent many years as a research astronomer and programmer and now is the research manager for SCIES. Phil has come to Sonoma county from suburban Maryland, where he worked at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. At Goddard, Phil participated in the calibration and use of the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph (STIS), an instrument on board the Hubble Space Telescope. He has done research on objects ranging from STIS observations of the first ever brown dwarf discovered (a brown dwarf is an object that is too small to be a star but too big to be a planet) to other Hubble observations of Supernova 1987A, a star that blew up in 1987. Phil has also worked on asteroids, quasars, galaxies, normal stars, dying stars, and stars being born.

Phil received his Ph.D. in astronomy at the University of Virginia in 1994. While there, he helped teach introductory astronomy classes and for three years he ran a nighttime lab where students used binoculars and telescopes to observe the sky. It was during that time that Phil was bitten by the bug to teach astronomy to the public.

Balancing his enthusiasm of public outreach and writing, Phil enjoys spending time with his wife and daughter. Recently he has become more interested in the history of science, including how science has been misused and misrepresented. “As television and movies have become better and better at shaping our views of the world, it is becoming more and more important that people understand what it means to be scientific.” To that end, he created the Bad Astronomy website at http://www.badastronomy.com, where he discusses myths and misconceptions about astronomy in an informal and humorous way. On the website you’ll find big-budget movie reviews, personal essays, and links to even more information about astronomy.

Phil brings his experience in teaching and writing about astronomy to SSU, where he will use them to help create workshops and interactive astronomy-based games to help teachers relay to their students the excitement and interest in astronomy that he feels.