Xopata

That is a sick idea. Not sure if it'd be possible with a gamma ray burst, you can get a few seconds warning if your lucky. Presumably what you are sending could not be an actual vessel, as launches take time, and to et any meaningful interstellar distance is gonna take a lot of time and cash. But if you had access to a few broadcasters, at a few locations, you could rig them to send out whatever you wanted them to send as radio waves. This could be setup to go automatically, if something like a nuclear war occurs, or manually triggered, in case of a more subtle threat. Then again, you could just broadcast continuously, as the longer the broadcast is sent out the greater the chance of it being received is, due to an increase in area covered and how long said area is covered.

Not OP, but I'm an amateur astronomer.

So, telescopes make things look bigger. The things in those pictures, while actually massive, look very small from here, as they're far away. When the telescope makes them look bigger it spreads out the light. This makes the image bigger, but fainter. To make the image brighter the camera that captures the picture takes the photo for a long time, so more light goes in, making a brighter picture.

You've probably heard about the electromagnetic spectrum. At one end is gamma rays, x-rays and ultraviolet light. At the other in infrared and radio waves. In the middle is the visible light, which we can see. Cameras can be told to only capture from certain parts of the spectrum. This way we can make images more red or green or blue.

Or we can add in the invisible light, but represent it with any colour we choose. This can let us, for example, see past the dust in a nebula. The visible light can't penetrate the dust, but radio waves can. This lets us see the interior and other cool stuff.

By changing which light is used to make the picture we show different things, and just make it a different colour.

A good picture showing one object in different lights is this one: http://www.srl.caltech.edu/HEFT/images/800crab.png

and this one shows what happens when you combing the different lights: http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap080110.html

Edit: words

As someone looking to go down a (relatively) similar path to you, thanks for the IamA.

So, questions:

1) Ever do any amateur visual astronomy?

2) How is the employment environment/pay? (feel free to ignore that if it's too personal)

3) How hard is the path? As in, is strong motivation/dedication and a solid base of knowledge enough to succeed?

Those who can't teach, teach teachers.