AAVSO: The 97th Spring Meeting of the AAVSO

Meeting Highlights
By Mike Simonsen

Mike Simonsen at Stonehenge

One of the things we had been hoping for when we planned our trip to England was to enjoy the spring blooming bulbs, flowers, shrubs and trees in April. It became immediately apparent on the bus ride to Cambridge from Gatwick airport that the unseasonably cool weather was going to dash our hopes. It was nice to see green grass everywhere so early in the year, but most of England looked very late winter-like.

In spite of the weather, Cambridge turned out to be warm and charming in its own right, mostly due to our hosts, the British Astronomical Association. Thursday night we got together for the first time over a meal in the dining hall. It had been a while since I'd seen my friends John Toone and Roger Pickard, so I was glad they were among the early arrivals sharing a meal and catching up on things. After dinner most of the group went on to the Cambridge Institute of Astronomy to take a tour and see the historic telescopes there. Irene, John and I opted for the quiet of a local pub for a few drinks and then John and I went out to observe several cataclysmic variables using the C8 he had conveniently stashed in his trunk (or 'boot' as the English call it).

The crowd in the dining hall was much larger Friday morning and the hallway leading to the meeting room was full of displays and people. After a welcome message from the BAA President, Roger Pickard and Arne the paper session began. I thought the quality of the papers was very high at this meeting.

Paula Szkody's paper emphasized the importance of amateur collaboration and cooperation in her talk on HST campaigns of cataclysmic variables. Des Loughney made a good summary of some visual observing projects on bright binocular EBs. The VSS has an active bright EB observing program. Davis Boyd's talk on SW Sex stars and his proposed observing campaign was very informative. I'd always thought this class of stars was only interesting spectroscopically, so his proposal for amateur contributions in this field was exciting. Pamela Gay talked about AAVSO's new initiatives in EPO. Specifically the speakers' bureau, writers' bureau and our endeavor to participate in all the major star parties in America in the coming years. Pamela also blogged the whole meeting live on Astronomycast, so if you want a flavor of what happened in roughly chronological order see: http://www.astronomycast.com/LIVE/ My talk on VSP, VSX and VSD had a lively Q&A session afterward.

Martin Nicholson did a very good job on his talk about remote observing with the Global Rent A Scope . His evaluation of the advantages and disadvantages was particularly enlightening. Patrick Wils' paper on data-mining NSVS was very good. We are fortunate to have him involved with VSX and AAVSO in general. He's smart, energetic and willing to do a lot as a volunteer. I was glad to finally meet him in person. John Toone's paper on the early history of the BAAVSS was particularly appealing to me. I have an affinity for the visual observers from the early days of variable star research.

Robin Leadbetter's talk on amateur spectroscopy was very interesting and well done. The quality of work that can be done with relatively small telescopes and spectrographs is exciting news for amateurs thinking about branching out into other areas of variable star research. Tom Lloyd-Evans paper on Carbon stars contained loads of spectrographic and visual information on several very interesting southern stars. In fact, there were so many talks given that highlighted the spectral information on variable stars that with just a few more this could easily have been turned into an amateur spectroscopy workshop!

Boris Gaensicke's talk on CVs discovered by large surveys was fast paced and informative. He had to move quickly, since he had 70 slides in his PowerPoint! Boris is an engaging speaker and did a particularly fine presentation. After Dinner Friday, professor Mike Bode gave a talk summarizing research results from outbursts of the recurrent nova RS Ophiuchi. One of the pleasant surprises in the results was that they had the system modeled fairly accurately the last time around, and were able to verify that during the most recent outburst.

That evening I had the pleasure of an entertaining, enthusiastic roundtable discussion with several Belgian observers in the local pub. We shared stories of how we got started in variable star astronomy, what keeps us coming back for more, our hopes and concerns for the future of research and visual observing in particular. It was especially nice for me to finally meet Erwin van Ballegoij, who I have known for years through email only.

The Saturday session was equally informative and fun. Rene Oudmaijer was very engaging and funny. I totally enjoyed his talk on star formation. Arne gave a combined talk on the AAVSO robotic telescopes and an abbreviated Director's report. The BAA members are keen to know what we are up to these days, as evidenced by the Q&A session after, that could have gone on much longer if time allowed. Guy Hurst did an excellent paper on the history and results of the TA/BAAVSS supernovae and novae search program. It's pretty remarkable what they get accomplished with their weather. It was also a personal highlight for me to finally get to meet Guy. Former councilman Arto Oksanen gave a nice paper on the High Energy Network and chasing GRB afterglows. He humbly suggests that to catch an afterglow requires a certain amount of luck, but I think his success is also the result of a good deal of persistence and talent.

I had to miss the middle of the session on solar observing so I could hole up in my room to edit and reformat the presentation I was going to give that evening. The scheduled speaker had suddenly taken ill, so Roger asked me earlier that morning if I could do the after dinner lecture, a humorous presentation I had done before called 'Astronomy: Hobby or Obsession'.

The Saturday banquet was one of the best meals I had the whole time I was in the UK. Two special awards were given out after the banquet. The AAVSO presented Roger Pickard with a lifetime membership in the AAVSO, in recognition of a lifetime of contributions to variable star research. And the BAAVSS awarded Gary Poyner the Butterworth Award for his amazing contribution of over 200,000 visual observations.

My 'Hobby or Obsession' talk was well received. I think they enjoyed it almost as much as I enjoyed doing it. The meeting was adjourned and we had to say goodbye to friends like Gary Poyner and Chris Jones who were heading home that night.

The following day was spent bussing across the English countryside as we visited Stonehenge and another stone circle formation Avebury, which is so large it actually has a small town inside of it. That is a trip I shall never forget.

Irene and I went on to stay another week in London, seeing the sights and doing all the touristy things there are to do in that magnificent city. The perfect topper to an already memorable trip was staying in the home of Brian and Hazel McGee our final night, enjoying what can only be described as a gourmet meal prepared by Brian, and hassle-free curbside delivery to the Gatwick terminal the following day from Hazel.

Thank you to all our British hosts for making this meeting a special memory. I look forward to seeing you all again soon.