S3 EP8: Sailing Through the Cosmos: Heather Preston’s Astronomical Adventures

Heather Preston is a professional astronomer who has lived in Fort Myers since 2012. She has been Planetarium Director of the Calusa Nature Center & Planetarium in Fort Myers since September, 2014. She graduated from MIT with a Bachelor’s in Physics, from the University of Washington with a Master’s in Astronomy, and was hired out of her PhD program to become an Operations Astronomer for the Hubble Space Telescope. She worked at the Space Telescope Science Institute from before launch to the first servicing mission. During that time, she she married Derek Buzasi, a fellow astronomer, who for the last 12 years has served as the Whitaker Eminent Scholar in Science at FGCU. They lived aboard a cruising sailboat twice – the first time for 18 months in the mid-90s, the second for a year when their son turned 11, to give him that amazing experience: and so, they arrived in Fort Myers by sailboat, to allow Derek to take up his new job at FGCU. They have been here ever since.