Ralph Megna became an active amateur astronomer as a teenager and served as a vice president of the South Florida Amateur Astronomical Society - a 501(c)(3) organization by the age of sixteen. In college, he managed the operations of his school's observatory for the Physics Department.
After a hiatus from the hobby, he resumed his interest in astronomy with a focus on planetary imaging, and more recently, asteroid spectroscopy and photometry. He currently is the Chairman of the Board of Trustee for the Riverside Astronomical Society, Inc., and previously was the Secretary of the Board. He also serves the RAS as its Site Director for GMARS.
He is a member of the Society for Astronomical Sciences and chairs the annual Nightfall star party at Borrego Springs, California. He is the author of several published articles on astronomical photography, as well as co-author of a paper on asteroid spectroscopy. In his day job, he was a contractor to NASA as part of its Space Transportation Architecture Studies in the late 1990s.
