Dr. Rick Fienberg is the American Astronomical Society’s Press Officer and Education & Outreach Coordinator. From 1986 to 2008 he served in a variety of editorial and management positions at Sky & Telescope magazine, including eight years as Editor in Chief. He spent the 2008-2009 academic year as Visiting Scientist in Astronomy & Astrophysics at Phillips Academy, the prestigious college-preparatory school in Andover, Massachusetts.

Rick earned his B.A. in physics at Rice University and his M.A. and Ph.D. in astronomy at Harvard University; he has done research on the aurora borealis, asteroids, planetary nebulae, active galaxies, and the center of the Milky Way. He is a co-creator of the Galileoscope educational telescope kit, a Cornerstone Project of the International Year of Astronomy 2009. Rick is an elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), and the International Astronomical Union (IAU) has named asteroid 9983 Rickfienberg in his honor.

Though trained as a professional astronomer, Rick remains an amateur at heart, observing the sky and taking astrophotos from his homebuilt hilltop observatory in southern New Hampshire. An inveterate traveler, often in pursuit of total solar eclipses, Rick has visited all seven continents and the North and South Poles.