Announcement to Astronomers of Campaign for Crowdfunding

I am posting the following announcement to "Astronomers" and "Scientists" groups to get support for my "Crowdfunding Campaign for Participation" starting with a campaign for help to go to the American Astronomical Society meeting in Washington DC starting January 3, 2014:

Dear Astronomers:

I ask the astronomy community for support for my rockethub crowdfunding campaign for participation in the AAS conference next week in Washington, DC to present the evidence for planets migrating into their stars. Please share my campaign so that I can pay my registration and not have to stay outside the meeting.

I ask you help me find support due to me having the courage to present an exciting and creative project done all alone with no support, as a means to take back being a full participant in astronomy research by presenting my work showing how planets migrate into the stars.

Please help me get whatever attention possible to seek philanthropists who support science who could pay my registration and meals, and pay back for me to not have to use my savings for travel and a place to stay. A couch in your hotel room, or taking me out for a meal would be greatly appreciated. I am willing to stand outside until I get help paying the registration, which scares me since my talk is Monday morning. Please help me go into the conference, and please help me to “stop the pile from dwindling.”

Can you share my campaign by forwarding my crowdfunding page on rockethub to friends? It is at http://www.rockethub.com/projects/37614-smashing-hot-balls-of-gas-as-planets-crash-into-stars ? Share my blog, too!: astrostuart.blogspot.com. Subscribe to my videos at http://www.youtube.com/user/astrostuart . I will be regularly updating and improving both sites, placing new blogs and videos all while I am also both job searching and preparing my talk. I seek media coverage of me making a major public effort to stay a part of the science I chose to do, with the hope of attracting a documentary filmmaker to document my campaign for participation in science.

I am campaigning for the civil right of a scientist to maintain his belonging in those projects he has contributed to with the expectation of being part presenting the results of the group. Nothing takes away your sense of belonging more than randomly being told “no one wants to talk to you,” and I ask the community to support my refusal to stand for this! I have been campaigning to take back my participation in the UCSB-affiliated observatory in order to resume being a part of the transit validation program I started. Keeping me off makes it look to potential employers as if I didn't finish when applying for a new job, when the reality is I have been offered to see the data only after those who came later have a chance to finish it first, in which case the astronomer who had actually been at the telescope first becomes required to confirm his results have been previously presented by those who merely sent in subsequent online observation requests to the robotic scheduler. Keeping me off the first papers is how this observatory has kept me unemployed for years. I have published a request to collaborators to “go around the observatory” (http://arxiv.org/pdf/1309.3283v1.pdf). I loved having been this observatory’s first astronomer, and it is a matter of my civil rights to declare I choose not to leave. The reasons were random and personal in a way most unwelcome, and my appointment still had a year remaining, and showed this institution does not support its members to stay employed by encouraging participation all the way to finished papers. I ask you help me take back my participation!

I have shown determination and grit to submit papers on projects done all by myself so to stay a part of discovering the patterns of exoplanets. It is an ethical matter of the greatest importance that someone not be forced to leave science in any arbitrary manner as I have been. Please share this with those who can help me make my $1500 rockethub challenge to go to the AAS meeting as a means to launch support for me to get my papers through peer review so that I have a chance at a job.

Help me with whatever resources you can to stand for what is right: To be allowed and encouraged to participate in science.

Gratefully,

Stuart

S.F. Taylor

Hong Kong and Cottonwood, AZ  

Seeking sponsors: Campaign for participation kickoff speech

I am presenting my project on "planets going into stars" at a public talk that I arranged and am even paying for the rent myself. I am seeking philanthropic support first to go to the American Astronomical Society scientific meeting and second to have time to finish my paper.

Presenting my research and campaign in a talk has been an all-out effort, from practicing my talk at several Toastmasters clubs as well as to friends and family. It has been hard to put together a talk that is both about my campaign for participation and about my research findings, but I believe I have done it by presenting my history of seeking to be part of finding new planets, and then interpreting the patterns that have shown up now that we have over 1000 confirmed planets, as well as thousands of candidate planets from Kepler.

The first thing I will do after my talk is to develop a polished means crowdfunding better than my "donate" button on this blog or asking people to contact me. Contacting me right now is the best means for a "major supporter" to donate for me to go to the scientific meeting in early January and to finish my paper. I will post whether I choose to go through Kickstarter, Rockethub, or another crowdsourcing website.

Getting support in this manner is a sort of research itself. I hope to prove the value of public speaking by giving a bold and interesting talk tonight!