Profile: Rebecca Johnson

Rebecca Johnson is the editor of StarDate magazine. She has been writing about astronomy for 10 years, and enjoys sharing the mysteries of the universe with readers.

Rebecca became interested in astronomy in grade school upon seeing Voyager images of Saturn's rings in her school's library, but did not have a chance to really become involved in astronomy until she attended college at The University of Texas at Austin. She took astronomy courses there while earning a degree in journalism and working as a writer for both StarDate and NASA's Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Maryland (scientific headquarters for Hubble Space Telescope). She subsequently obtained a master's degree in science journalism from Texas A&M University, which included a writing internship at Sky & Telescope magazine in Cambridge, Mass.

After graduate school, Rebecca worked as a pubic information officer for the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in Charlottesville, Virginia. Her work focused particularly on preparations for the international Atacama Large Millimeter Array now under construction in Chile, and the first light and early operations of the world's largest fully steerable radio telescope, the Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia.

She returned to Austin in 2001 to become the editor of StarDate magazine. In addition, Rebecca manages McDonald Observatory's “What are Astronomers Doing?” website, which provides the public with weekly updated articles on the current research at the observatory and profiles of astronomers, telescopes, and instruments.

Rebecca also handles media relations for McDonald Observatory, which provides her the chance to learn first-hand about the latest research from one of the world's largest optical telescopes (the Hobby-Eberly Telescope at McDonald), as well as opportunities to work with other institutions nationally and internationally through McDonald's participation in the newly operational Southern African Large Telescope and the construction of the Giant Magellan Telescope.