Gamze Menali travelled to Tuscon, Arizona for the Astronomical Society of the Pacific meeting (September 14-16, 2005).

Gamze Menali's poster at the ASP Meeting: "AAVSO Outreach: An International Perspective."

I attended the Astronomical Society of the Pacific's 117th annual meeting (Building Community: The Emerging EPO Profession) in Tucson, Arizona, September 14-16, 2005. My goal was to learn more about other Educational Public Outreach programs, make connections with EPO professionals, and attend all of the informative sessions. I also presented a poster, "AAVSO Outreach: An International Perspective." The aim of the conference was to bring together a broad constituency with the passion for learning and sharing astronomy and astronomy-related activities. EPO professionals from more than 190 different organizations were attending with the same focus, science education and outreach. Teachers were there to learn better ways and means of how to bring the wonders of the night sky into their classrooms and scientists were there to understand the needs of the teachers and how better to serve them. There were more than 350 people, representing about 10 countries and more than 30 states. The attendees varied from teachers to students, from amateur astronomers to professional researchers, from space scientists to engineers and to families and the general public with an immense interest in astronomy. EPO professionals collaborate with schools, colleges and universities, with museums, amateur astronomy clubs and more, to learn and teach astronomy and to develop and implement EPO programs.

AAVSO has been a source of information and guidance to students who decide to study variable stars for class or science fair projects. We have several educational projects including Hands-On Astrophysics, a curriculum that benefits just about everyone who is interested in learning more about variable stars. This meeting was a good opportunity to spread the good word of the AAVSO and emphasize AAVSO's role in supporting the National Standards for Science Education by directly involving students in the scientific process through its projects. I got to see people that I know and worked with before and I got to meet some who I'd heard of before but had never gotten around to meeting in person. I sat in on various sessions that I thought I could most benefit from. There were parallel sessions, so I got to pick and chose. They were great and served the purpose well as far as enhancing my knowledge of EPO-related activities. My poster was well-received and I was out of business cards by the middle of the first day! Hopefully I will be able to apply some of what I have learned to my work in the days to come and the AAVSO will be able to benefit from the networking I did during my stay there. This meeting was a nice opportunity to interact with new people and foster networks. There was a lot of interest in what AAVSO has to offer through its services to support Science Education in schools and astronomy in general. There is definitely a huge crowd of teachers and students out there we can reach out to in order to provide variable star-related science projects, curricula, and support. In return, AAVSO will benefit from their data, and connections will be built through various EPO-related events.

The weather was just perfect in Arizona during the conference, an average of 95F with gorgeous, clear skies- perfect dry conditions, but the only time I got to enjoy being outdoors during the day was when I was walking from one room to the other between the talks and the workshops. However, my evenings were just perfect under crystal clear desert skies. I enjoyed and appreciated the beauties of heavens above, a scene I knew I would miss when I got back home to Boston. I stayed with Wendee and David Levy and their most beloved family member and my buddy, The Beagle, in their wonderful, guest-friendly home in Vail, AZ. People always tell me I am the perfect host, but I will know from here on when I receive such compliments from people that they never experienced the Levys' hospitality! It was just perfect and heart-warming.

—Gamze

Aaron Price travelled to Aspen, Colorado for the National Virtual Observatory 2nd Summer School (September 6-15, 2005).

I attended the National Virtual Observatory 2nd Summer School ("Science With the Virtual Observatory") in Aspen, Colorado from September 6-15, 2005. The official goal was to work with experienced NVO scientists and software developers to learn how to do astrophysics with the Virtual Observatory. The emphasis of the program was on how to develop scientific tools for use with the NVO.

I guestimate that around 50 students attended along with ~10 instructors. Students were from all over the world and their backgrounds ranged from astrophysicists with little IT knowledge to IT professionals with little astrophysical background. The conference went surprisingly smooth considering the advanced technical requirements and diverse computing platforms present.

The AAVSO is in a good position to both take advantage of and to help the NVO. There was lots of interest in AAVSO data and services. As a result I plan to spend the first few months of the new year upgrading our web site software to support NVO standards. This will coincide with a general upgrade and expansion of our web site with lots of new tools that should be exciting for our members and observers.

At the end of the conference the students broke into teams to develop and work on a project using what we learned. I was part of a team that worked on VOEvent, which is the NVO XML standard for generating, distributing and processing astronomical alerts. I wrote the client software that generates the alerts. Two blue ribbons were awarded to teams at the end of the conference, one for science and one for technical achievement. Our team won the technical award which includes a small grant for travel to an AAS meeting. I was chosen by the team to represent them at the next AAS meeting where I will present a poster and demonstration of our automated alert system.

It was a challenging 10 days in Aspen. The weather was gorgeous but we were pretty busy and I did not get out much. However, these types of meetings are great fun to me because they are both tough and full of new ideas which opens the doors to lots of possibilities.

—Aaron