Renew Now and Save!

Online membership renewal season is here! Our mission — to enhance and share humanity’s scientific understanding of the universe — cannot be achieved without your help and support. Please renew today at https://members.aas.org. Note that for the first time in five years we are able to hold our membership rates steady. That’s right: there is no increase in AAS dues for 2015!

The AAS celebrated many accomplishments in 2014, including:

• Successful winter and summer meetings in Washington, DC, and Boston, MA, respectively;
• Two meetings in the AAS Topical Conference Series (AASTCS), one on exascale radio astronomy and another on the origin, evolution, and collapse of dense cores;
• A significant boost to our innovation abilities with the hiring of a Director of Special Projects;
• Formation of a Journals Futures Task Force to advise the AAS Council on possible enhancements to our journals;
• Establishment of an exciting eBooks partnership with IOP Publishing;
• Training of 30 new AAS Astronomy Ambassadors, who, together with the earlier cohort, have put on more than 200 outreach events and reached more than 10,000 people in just 18 months;
• Expansion of the AAS Agents program, which helps the Society connect directly with academic departments and carries benefits for students, their departments, and the Society.
• Among the highlights of the coming year are another AASTCS meeting and the 29th General Assembly of the International Astronomical Union (IAU), which we are organizing and hosting next August in Honolulu.

If you renew before the end of 2014, you will get a one-time 15% discount on your share of the author charges for one paper published in an AAS journal. We are again offering the option to renew for two years at the current rate. These benefits can be combined: If you renew by 31 December for two years, you will receive the 15% author discount on one paper each in 2015 and 2016.*

Would you like to give some students a chance to have their first look through a telescope? For your donation of $150 or more to the AAS General Fund, the AAS will provide a free Galileoscope to a school or other educational organization of your choice. When you donate $250 or more to any fund you will be welcome to hang out in the Donor Lounge at our upcoming meeting in Seattle, WA.

The AAS accepts donations of appreciated stock, providing you with added tax benefits, and we can also help you designate a planned gift to the Society in your estate plan or will. Please contact me personally for information and assistance in these two areas.

I want to end by stressing that by renewing early and online you save the Society considerable expense while also saving some trees and helping us to reduce our carbon footprint. Thank you for your continued support; we look forward to serving you in 2015.

*Please note that two-year renewals are not available to junior members, who instead get two years for the price of one when first joining the Society. The 15% author discount, however, is available to all renewing members, including junior members.