AAVSO: Impact on Science

The AAVSO provides invaluable services to astronomy, first in collecting and maintaining very long-term light curves for a huge number of stars, and second in motivating a global network of amateurs to track and report observations of individual objects in support of multi-wavelength observations... the professional community is finally beginning to realize the importance of the time domain, with major instruments like Swift, LSST, and SKA making the exploration of this last astronomical frontier one of their major objectives. The AAVSO will play an ever more critical role, providing consistent, reliable, and global optical coverage for the sources these instruments discover and study.

Michael Rupen (NRAO)

Nowhere is the relationship between professional and amateur counterparts more committed than between the professional and amateur astronomer (pdf download). Professional astronomers often depend upon the large numbers of amateur observers -- at distributed sites, and often with unlimited telescope time -- to provide critical data for their research needs. With thousands of experienced, dedicated, and enthusiastic observers world-wide, professional astronomers can count upon the amateur community to provide photometry and visual light curves, long-term monitoring, and rapid notification of significant events. Amateur variable star astronomers can provide data ranging from high-precision, high-speed time-series of cataclysmic variables to long-term, multi-decade light curves of hundreds of Mira variables, and nearly every variable star class in between. The Pro-Am relationship benefits amateur astronomers as well: the use of amateur data in scientific work is a point of pride for many observers, and feedback from the professional community helps the amateur to plan observations and observing programs, and fine-tune their observation methods and data reduction.

Professional-Amateur collaboration was used with the following telescopes: From L to R: Hubble Space Telescope, Chandra X-Ray Observatory, Swift, and Spitzer Space Telescope. Credit: NASA, NASA/JPL-Caltech

Whether an astronomer wants to check for period variations based on nearly 100 years of data for a certain star, or if a ground-based observation of a particular variable is needed in order to schedule satellite observations, professionals often turn to the AAVSO and its observers relying on their dilligent and careful work to provide the data they need.

Here are just a few examples of how Professional-Amateur collaborations work to produce real science with real results:

• AAVSO observers have for decades been asked to assist with several multiwavelength monitoring campaigns, providing optical data for analysis, and monitoring and rapid notification of significant events for follow-up with ground- and space-based facilities. In 2008 alone, AAVSO observers were asked to provide support for observations with the Very Large Array, VERITAS, HST, Chandra, Spitzer, and XMM-Newton, as well as complementing observations by larger ground-based observatories.
• During 2007 and 2008, at least 40 publications appeared in top-tier research journals involving the AAVSO data, and hundreds more data requests were received to plan observations, provide educational examples of light curves, and other uses.
• The AAVSO has significant data holdings for members of several classes of variables, enabling statistically complete class studies in the optical.
• AAVSO volunteers have helped develop several recent high-impact projects, including the AAVSO Comparison Star Database, Variable Star Index (VSX), and our online custom chart maker -- Variable Star Plotter (VSP)
• Amateur observers from around the world continue to make the majority of Galactic Nova discoveries every year, and also provide the earliest notification for several other important events like: recurrent nova outbursts, symbiotic star outbursts, R CrB star fadings, and binary star eclipse and RR Lyrae/Cepheid timings
• Amateur observers continue to monitor bright variables -- those not easily observable with larger facilities, but which are important targets for both high-resolution spectroscopy and optical/IR interferometry.

Recent press releases and other AAVSO/Pro-Am news

• AAVSO in Print - Research using AAVSO data (updated Feb. 2009)
• Annual Report of the AAVSO
• AAVSO Observing Campaigns
• AAVSO High-Energy Network Recent Results
• Press release: Radio jets detected in SS Cygni (published in Science, June 6, 2008)
• Press release: Amateurs give the green light to Hubble Space Telescope observations (November 19, 2007)
• Press release: AAVSO observer discovers a GRB afterglow (October 12, 2007)
• HST Press release: "Astronomers Use Innovative Technique to Find Extrasolar Planet " (June 22, 2006)
• Pro-Am Collaboration and the AAVSO by AAVSO Director, Arne Henden (ASP Conference Series, 2006)

Contact the AAVSO

The AAVSO is here to serve the astronomical community. If your research would benefit from archival variable star photometry, new observations by our global community of observers, or target monitoring and rapid notification of significant events, please contact us via our web-based form, email, or telephone: