Jim BELL #226
Letters to the Editor
from
Jim BELL
in CMO #226
@ . . . .
ALPO, AL, BAA, and OAA friends: With my other commitments to space missions (even if they keep crashing into Mars--dammit!), teaching, advising students, committee work, etc. and lack of funding from NASA for telescopic work, I find myself having less and less time for Marswatch. I have asked my colleague Dave Klassen if he would be willing to take over the responsibilities, and he has agreed.
Dave used to be a Research Associate here at Cornell, and is now a faculty member at Rowan University in New Jersey, and he will be taking over the Marswatch internet activities in the coming weeks to months. He is an experienced Mars observer and is very interested in continuing to promote and utilize professional/amateur collaborations to further Mars science. Unfortunately, he is a Babylon 5 fan, but we can't all be perfect.
Would you please add Dave to your email lists for all future Marswatch correspondences? Dave's email is klassen@rowan.edu
I think there is still much interest in Marswatch out there. The 1999 opposition site that Bert set up is fantastic--take a stroll through it some day and gape at the quality of observers out there! And I still get a few new requests for newsletters every week, and I noted a large number of hits to the Marswatch sites in the days preceding the MPL landing.
Public interest is still there. Thank God...or we wouldn't have a Mars program after the last few months. . .
I won't disappear from the scene, believe me, but you will be hearing more often from Dave as time goes on. I believe that he's planning to put together his first newsletter fairly soon. If you have any materials to include, please send them along.
Thanks, and clear skies, despite the Martian Curse!
(8 Dec 1999 email)
Jim BELL (Ithaca. NY, USA) : jimbo@marswatch.tn.cornell.edu
Assistant Professor, Cornell University, Department of Astronomy
402 Space Sciences Building, Ithaca, NY 14853-6801
phone: 607-255-5911; fax: 607-255-9002
WWW: http://marswatch.tn.cornell.edu