Gordon Myers Amateur Achievement Award

The Gordon Myers Amateur Achievement Award, known until 2018 as the Amateur Achievement Award of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, is one of nine annual astronomical awards managed by the Astronomical Society of the Pacific. It recognizes "significant contributions to astronomy or amateur astronomy by those not employed in the field of astronomy in a professional capacity."^[1] The contributions can be done in the fields of both observational astronomy or astronomical technologies.^[2] The award has been given to amateur astronomers from various countries since 1979 and has become one of the most geographically diverse astronomical awards.^[3]

Gordon Myers Amateur Achievement Award
Awarded for	Significant contributions to astronomy or amateur astronomy
Presented by	Astronomical Society of the Pacific
First award	1979
Website	astrosociety.org

Award winners receive a commemorative plaque, which is presented at the Annual Meeting Awards Banquet. The monetary value of the award is US$500. Candidates can be nominated by any member of the astronomical community (with the exception of the nominees themselves and their families) and the nominations should be accompanied by other letters of support. All the nominations have to be delivered to the Astronomical Society of the Pacific by December 15 of the nominating year and remain valid for three years. The winners are selected by the Awards Committee appointed by the Board of Directors. The committee have the right not to award any of the nominees if they do not consider their achievements exceptional enough,^[1] which has already happened several times.^[4]

Winners

Recipients of the award have been: ^[5]

David Levy, the 1993 awardee

Nik Szymanek, the 2004 awardee

Kamil Hornoch, the 2006 awardee

Year	Name	Nationality	Field	Notes
1979	James McMahon		Occultations	[3]
1980	Frank Bateson		Variable stars	[6]
1981	George Alcock		Novae/Comets	[7]
1982	Ben Mayer		Problicom	[8][9]
1983	J. U. Gunter		Asteroids	[10][11]
1984	Russell Genet		Photoelectric photometry	[12]
1985	Gregg Thompson & Robert Evans		Supernovae	[13][14]
1986	Jean Meeus		Computational astronomy	[15][16]
1987	Clinton B. Ford		Variable stars	[17]
1988	Jack B. Newton		Astrophotography	[18]
1989	Paul Baize		Double stars	[19]
1990	Oscar Monnig		Meteorites	[20]
1991	Otto Kippes		Asteroid orbits	[21]
1992	Richard Lines & Helen Lines		Photoelectric photometry of variable stars	[22]
1993	David H. Levy	/	Comets	[23]
1994	Walter H. Haas		ALPO founder	[4]
1995	Donald Parker		Planetary imaging	[4]
1996	M. Daniel Overbeek		Variable stars	[24]
1997	Edward A. Halbach		Variable stars/occultations	[25]
1998	Albert F. A. L. Jones		Variable stars/comets	[26]
1999	Warren Offutt		Trans-Neptunian objects	[27]
2000	Paul Boltwood		Deep-sky imaging/Comet Hyakutake	[28]
2001	Syuichi Nakano		Computing comet orbits	[29]
2002		No award
2003	Kyle E. Smalley		Near-Earth asteroids	[30]
2004	Nik Szymanek		Imaging and image processing	[31]
2005	Tim Hunter		Light pollution	[32]
2006	Kamil Hornoch		Visual and CCD observations of variable stars/comets	[33]
2007	Peter Francis Williams		R Coronae Borealis stars/variable star monitoring	[34]
2008	Steve Mandel		CCD imaging	[35]
2009	Thomas Droege		Developing CCD instrumentation and a worldwide sky survey program	[36]
2010	Allan Rahill		Adapted Canadian Meteorological Centre forecast products for the purpose of planning observing sessions with highly accurate high resolution point forecasts of cloud cover, transparency, seeing, darkness, wind, temperature and humidity over North and Central America	[37]
2011	Kevin Apps		Advancing the fields of extra-solar planet research and stellar astrophysics	[38]
2012	Jeffrey L. Hopkins		Photoelectric photometry and high-resolution spectroscopy	[39]
2013		No award
2014	Rod Stubbings		Instrumental in helping redefine the Z Cam sub-type of dwarf novae, and discovered the recurrent nova V745 Sco in outburst in the morning sky, triggering an AAVSO Alert Notice and significant attention from the astronomical community	[40]
2015		No award
2016		No award
2017	Gao Xing		Supernovae/Comets	[41]
2018	Thiam-Guan Tan		Exoplanets	[42]

See also

Other Astronomical Society of the Pacific awards:

• Catherine Wolfe Bruce Gold Medal
• Klumpke-Roberts Award
• Robert J. Trumpler Award

Other amateur astronomy awards:

• Chambliss Amateur Achievement Award
• List of astronomy awards