James B. (Jim) Kaler, Professor Emeritus of Astronomy, earned hisA.B. at the University of Michigan, his Ph.D. at UCLA, and has beenat the University of Illinois since 1964. His research area, inwhich he published more than 120 papers, involved dying stars. Prof. Kaler has held Fulbright and Guggenheim Fellowships, has beenawarded medals for his work from the University of Liège inBelgium and the University of Mexico, gave both the Armand SpitzLecture to the Great Lakes Planetarium Association and the MargaretNoble Address to the Middle Atlantic Planetarium Society, andreceived the 2003 Campus Award for Excellence in Public Engagement.He has written for a variety of popular and semi-popular magazines,was a consultant for Time-Life Books on theirVoyage Through theUniverse series, long appeared on Illinois television andradio, and has published nearly 20books,includingStars and their Spectra,The Ever-ChangingSky,Extreme Stars, and theCambridge Encyclopedia ofStars (Cambridge),Stars andCosmic Clouds(Scientific American Library), two textbooks,The Little Book ofStars andThe Hundred Greatest Stars (Copernicus), andthree audio courses (Recorded Books). His latest books areHeaven's Touch (Princeton), the second edition ofStarsand their Spectra (Cambridge), andFirst Magnitude: A Bookof the Bright Sky (World Scientific). Kaler operates two mainwebsites,Skylights, which provides weeklyinformation on the sights of the sky, andStars, which features the "Star ofthe Week." Since 1998, the two, along with nearly 30 cognatesites, have received a total of more than eight million visitors. Kaler is a past president of the Boards of Directors of theAstronomical Society of the Pacific and the Champaign-UrbanaSymphony. Asteroid 1998 JK was named17853 Kaler in honorof his outreach activities, and in 2008 he received the AmericanAstronomical Society's Education Prize.