The new astronomer at the Cincinnati Observatory is no stranger to the facility. Wes Ryle has been a presenter and volunteer there, while serving as director of the Thomas More University Observatory where his main focus was on teaching astronomy and physics to students.
"I ran a pretty successful public outreach program at Thomas More for 16 years," he says. "One of the things I prided myself on was always changing up the topic, pretty much every time we were giving a presentation. I never really like to repeat the same topic twice. That’s hopefully something that will be a little bit new in terms of the programs, either just the public events or classes we can offer."
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Ryle says outreach is important for the Observatory. "Astronomy has always been a way to convince the public that science is interesting, science is sexy, science can be something that can be understood by the general population," he says. "It's always been easy for me as an astronomer to use astronomy as that hook in order to bring people in and teach them a little bit of science literacy along the way."
Ryle is originally from Burlington, Ky. He starts working full-time as the new astronomer at the Observatory on June 17.
