To members of IAU Division H
The IAU earlier in 2021 established a new EC working group for professional-amateur relations in astronomy, for short, the Pro-Am WG.
This WG has a dozen members around the world, and currently has Prof Aniket Sule (India) and Prof John Hearnshaw (New Zealand) as co-chairs. See https://www.iau.org/science/scientific_bodies/working_groups/330/ for more details.
One of the aims of the Pro-Am WG is to foster research collaborations between amateurs and professionals. We plan to promote and support the IAU programme ‘Meet the IAU Astronomers!’, which connects IAU members with amateur astronomer groups and the public through talks and meetings on astronomical research topics. We will also discuss with amateur societies the importance of pro-am collaborations and how amateurs can be involved, and the importance of astronomy for society, among other topics. Furthermore, we plan a pro-am workshop involving amateur and professional astronomers every two years. So there are many exciting and interesting developments to look forward to.
We are seeking to expand the membership of the WG. We envisage two categories of new member.
· A small number of new members (perhaps 3 or 4) who will join the present members to form an Organizing Committee of the WG. The OC will hold regular meetings, probably every 2 or 3 months by Zoom. We are looking for a representative, well-balanced and diverse group to complement the existing OC members, taking into account, gender, geographical location and age bracket of the OC membership.
· We seek to have a wider membership at large, comprising (IAU Members or IAU Junior Members), being those interested in fostering pro-am relations, participating in any events such as the pro-am workshops, to receive any further messages about Pro-Am WG activities, and to contribute to new initiatives and policies of the WG from time to time. We welcome many new WG members to join us in this category.
In the first category (that is, further members of the Pro-Am WG OC) we especially seek to appoint a Pro-Am WG OC Secretary. This would be a voluntary position of someone on the OC who would be involved with the WG activities at a management level, including a survey of amateur astronomers world-wide. The OC Secretary would collate and keep track of correspondence between the WG and amateur astronomical societies in many countries of the world and take minutes of the WG meetings.
If you are an IAU Member or IAU Junior Member who would be interested in engaging with this exciting new venture, which could have really important ramifications for the future of the IAU and astronomy globally, then the position of Pro-Am WG Secretary could be for you.
Please email John Hearnshaw and Aniket Sule if you are interested in either Pro-Am WG OC membership or Pro-Am WG membership at large. Our emails are john.hearnshaw@canterbury.ac.nz and aniket.sule@gmail.com.
Best wishes
Aniket Sule and John Hearnshaw