Like many people in the AAVSO, Dr. Kristine Larsen contributes to the organization in a number of important and valuable ways. She is an active solar observer and a generous donor. She has served as an instructor for our CHOICE online educational courses, and after serving on the AAVSO council from 1997-2001, she is again helping to lead the organization by serving as 1st Vice President of the council.
Her contributions to the Variable Star of the Season, Novae and Khi Cygni, are informative, well-written and engaging, and her research paper on Martha Stahr Carpenter, Reminiscences on the Career of Martha Stahr Carpenter: Between a Rock and (Several) Hard Places (JAAVSO Volume 40, 2012) is the most complete biographical study of her to date.
Outside the AAVSO, Kristine is a Professor of Astronomy at Central Connecticut State University and has taught online classes in general astronomy and earth science for over a decade. Her favorite instruments are Dobsonians- and she always starhops! In fact, her favorite university class to teach is an observational astronomy course centered around starhopping.
She is a member of the Springfield Telescope Makers (Stellafane) and after grinding an 8 inch mirror, she is now working on a 12.5 inch mirror. She has earned Messier, Binocular Messier, Outreach, and Meteor observing
certificates from the Astronomical League, and currently serves as assistant editor for the League's magazine Reflector.
It's very hard to keep people from noticing this kind of exceptional effort, regardless of how unassuming the person is, and that is true for Dr. Larsen as well.
On November 20, 2014, Kristine was named the recipient of the 2014 Women in Science Leadership Award from the Petit Family Foundation and the Connecticut Science Center.
Congratulations, Kristine, and thank you for all you do for the AAVSO and the astronomical community.