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IOTA 2016 Annual Meeting Awards Presentations

The IOTA Annual Meeting Awards Presentations recognize exceptional contributions to occultation science and the work of IOTA. The Homer F. DaBoll Award is presented to Art Lucas for his outstanding support and dedication to IOTA. The David E. Laird Award is presented to Derek C. Breit for his mentorship, promotion of IOTA, and significant contributions to occultation prediction and reporting.

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IOTA 2016 Annual Meeting Awards Presentations

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  1. IOTA 2016 Annual MeetingAwards Presentations Special Achievement Award Homer F. DaBoll Award David E. Laird Award

  2. The Importance of Awards

  3. An IOTA Special Achievement Award is presented to: Art Lucas “For his outstanding support of IOTA as an Officer for many years, for coordinating the two IOTA meetings held in the Stillwater, OK area in 2005 and 2016 and for being a dedicated observer of numerous occultations over the years.”

  4. 2016 DaBoll and LairdAward Selection • Nominations were solicited and received from IOTA affiliated organizations around the world • Participating award committee members were • Dave Herald, NSW, Australia (recipient 2007 award) • Steve Preston, USA (recipient 2009 award) • Hristo Pavlov, Australia (recipient 2010 award) • Hal Povenmire, USA (recipient, 2013 award) • Brian Loader, New Zealand (recipient, 2014 award) • Gerhard Dangl, Austria (recipient, 2015 award) • Bob Sandy, USA (recipient, 2015 award) • Ted Blank, New Hampshire, USA (chairman) • Terrence Redding, Florida, USA (chairman emeritus) • Richard Nugent, Texas, USA (committee member)

  5. Who is eligible for an award? Anyone who has made significant contribution to occultation science or the work of IOTA Excluding sitting IOTA officers & award committee IOTA membership not required Who can make Nominations? No defined restrictions at this time “Call for Nominations” made via Yahoo group effectively restricts nominators to active occultation community Encourage wide distribution of call Eligibility (current)

  6. Deliberations • Award nominations were received from several countries • Some nominees were recommended more than once • All were excellent candidates • All communication conducted by e-mail • private to the committee • independent of IOTA officers, unless a committee member • This year we again made a deliberate effort to encourage others to forward the request for nominations to other lists, mail groups and astronomy related organizations world-wide

  7. Deliberations, cont. • Effective nomination – written essay - documentation • Who, what, when, how • Approach was “discussion to reach a consensus”, considering: • Documentation provided with nominations • Experience & personal knowledge of the candidate’s contributions. • Members were asked to select their top picks to be considered and discussed. Then, narrow selection to one candidate for each award.

  8. Background DaBoll Award To recognize significant contributions tooccultation science and to the work of IOTA • Name honors Homer F. DaBoll (1920 – 1990) • Organizer of grazing occultation expeditions in Midwest USA beginning in late 1960s • Suggested the name “International Occultation Timing Association” • Founding officer of IOTA 1975 (secretary/treasurer) • First editor of Occultation Newsletter, from 1974 through 1990

  9. Previous AwardeesHomer F. DaBoll Award 2007 Dave Herald, Australia 2008 Edwin Goffin, Belgium 2009 Steve Preston, USA 2010 Hristo Pavlov, Australia 2011 Scotty Degenhardt, USA 2012 Kazuhisa Miyashita, Japan 2013 Graham L. Blow, New Zealand 2014 Brian Loader, New Zealand 2015 Gerhard Dangl, Austria

  10. The 2016 IOTA Homer F. DaBoll Award is presented to Derek C. Breit

  11. Derek C. Breit For many years, Derek has been a mentor, IOTA promoter, observer, webmaster of the occultation prediction clearinghouse web site http://www.poyntsource.com, and a contributor to occultation prediction information for the RASC annual publication, the Observer's Handbook. Derek's first asteroid occultation in the list available in Occult involved (859) Bouzareah on Sept. 20, 2002 at Martinez, California. He has been the IOTA Regional Coordinator for lunar occultation reports since at least 2007, and developed the “Why Occultations” brochure handout. He assisted the late Sandy Bumgarner in teaching astronomy at Mt. Diablo College in San Jose, CA. He has participated in at least 20 lunar graze campaigns, producing over 200 events; at least 74 individual lunar occultation events, and at least 53 asteroid occultation events measured between Sept 2002 and Jan 2016. His endless enthusiasm and “Breit Ideas” have been an inspiration to us all. IOTA is pleased to present the 2016 Homer F. DaBoll award to Derek C. Breit.

  12. Background, Laird Award To recognize those who, more than 15 years ago, made significant contributions to occultation science and to the work of IOTA • Name honors David E. Laird (1931 – 1968) • Physics teacher in Cincinnati, Ohio • Organizer of grazing occultation expeditions in Midwest USA beginning in early 1960s • Published articles “Have Telescope: Will Travel” Oct 1966 • Confirmed existence of a giant impact basin on the Lunar far side • Suffered from Leukemia and died in 1968 at age 37

  13. Previous AwardeesDavid E. Laird Award • 2013 Harold R. Povenmire, USA • 2014 Gordon E. Taylor, UK • 2015 Robert “Bob” Sandy, USA

  14. The 2016 IOTA David E. Laird Award Is Presented To: Jean Meeus

  15. Jean Meeus Jean has long been recognized as a leading authority on the calculation of all kinds of astronomical phenomena, including occultations. His books are classics, especially "Astronomical Formulae for Calculators" and "Astronomical Tables of the Sun, Moon, and Planets". The occultation section of the latter is comprehensive, not only providing extensive tables of the most important lunar occultations well into the future, but also clearly explaining the formulae for calculating the phenomena. He developed a method of calculating the paths of grazing occultations directly at equal intervals of longitude, necessary in most of the history of grazing occultations. He was the first person ever to observe a grazing occultation (predicted by himself) of lambda Geminorum from his observatory in Erps Kwerps, Belgium, on November 20, 1959 when he recorded 3 disappearances and reappearances of the star using a tape recorder. Jean has also predicted occultations of bright stars by major planets, such as the 1976 occultation of epsilon Geminorum by Mars. Successfully observed by the Kuiper Airborne Observatory, it was the first ever observation of a central flash due to atmospheric lensing, a technique which was then used to study the atmosphere of Pluto. For these and many other contributions, IOTA is pleased to present the 2016 David E. Laird award to Jean Meeus.

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