News and Announcements


02 February	New Sequence for SN2011B	There is now a sequence available for SN2011B. You will need to specify the coordinates (I used 08 55 48.50 +78 13 02.7 from the discovery telegram) to plot a chart, or you can simply download this E scale DSS image chart and print it. Enjoy!
02 February	AAVSO Special Notice #231	T Pyx Observations Requested February 1, 2011: Sumner Starrfield (Arizona State University) has informed us that Chandra is currently observing the cataclysmic variable T Pyx. He and his colleagues would like supporting optical monitoring of the star during the visitation. One visit is happening now; the next and final visit will occur on February 5 (UT).
31 January	AAVSO Special Notice #230	Nova Sagittarii 2011 = PNV J17474639-2335112
28 January	Monday System Maintenance	This Monday, 31 January 2011, at 12:00ET (17:00UTC) the AAVSO Website will be down for one hour to look into the installation of a Wide Area Network Router which, if successful, will combine the two internet feeds we have here at HQ into one which will allow us to seamlessly increase both our incomming and outgoing data rates. Any questions or concerns can be sent to Doc Kinne at rkinne @ aavso.org.
25 January	And Baby Makes...	Our Assistant Director, Aaron Price, has had a heck of a year! Early in 2010, he was made Assistant Director of the AAVSO. Later that year we celebrated his defending his Ph.D. But something more unusual, at least for an AAVSO staffer, was on the horizon. It would seem to an outside observer, perhaps, that AAVSO staffers are more committed to their work than most. While most of us (but not all) are married, the vast majority of us have no children now. With the single exception of Gloria, those that do have children have grown children.
24 January	AAVSO Special Notice #229	Outburst of FS Aurigae
23 January	A volunteer's valuable contribution	We received some sad news at the AAVSO ten days ago regarding one of the participants in the AAVSO's project to digitize data from the Harvard Annals. Daniel Rupp wrote me to let me know that his son, Andrew Rupp, passed away on January 7, 2011. Along with this news, Mr. Rupp passed along the spreadsheets that Andrew had in progress. All told, Andrew digitized more than 2700 observations for 10 different Mira variables, extending our light curves for these stars backwards in time by nearly eleven years.
14 January	Trivia Leaderboards Added	We've created leaderboards for the Centennial Trivia Challenge! Check them out to see how people are doing. Don't forget to answer today's question, either!
14 January	AAVSO Special Notice #228	Supernova 2011K in anonymous galaxy is Type-Ia pre-maximum January 14, 2011: We have been informed by the Central Bureau for Astronomical Telegrams (CBET 2636, Daniel W. E. Green, Ed.) that A. J. Drake, California Institute of Technology, et al. report a Catalina Real-Time Transient Survey discovery of a supernova in a faint anonymous galaxy in Catalina Sky Survey unfiltered images on January 13.19 UT at magnitude 15.1.
11 January	AAVSO Alert Notice 430	Photometry requested of Blazar-type Quasars 3C 273 and 3C 279
10 January	Twenty Million and Counting!	Approaching An Important Milestone! Take a look at the Recent Activity section on the website. See the number of observations that are in the AAVSO International Database? Soon - very soon - that number will reach twenty million! Twenty Million observations! That's, 20,000,000, or even 2 x 10⁷!
10 January	ejaavso preprint "Searching for Orbital Periods of Supergiant Faast X-ray Transients" by M. Falanga et al.	http://www.aavso.org/ejaavso
10 January	Charts and Sequences Update January 2011
07 January	AAVSO Alert Notice 429	Photometry requested for three "Vestoid" Near-Earth Objects January 8, 2011: Dr. Michael David Hicks (Jet Propulsion Laboratory) contacted the AAVSO requesting precision photometry of three solar system objects in support of NASA's DAWN mission to Vesta.
07 January	AAVSO Newsletter 47 now online	AAVSO Newsletter for January 2011 http://www.aavso.org/aavso-newsletter
05 January	ejaavso preprint "Studies of "Irregularity" in Pulsating Red Giants. III. by J. R. Percy, E. Terziev	http://www.aavso.org/ejaavso
04 January	Online Chat: Jan. 4 at 4pm	We will be hosting a Citizen Sky online chat this Tuesday at 4pm eastern (-5UT). Dr. Bob, Brian Kloppenborg, Rebecca, Aaron and other Citizen Sky and AAVSO staff will be on hand. Topics will include updates on epsilon Aurigae, the upcoming AAS meeting, and ideas for research teams. However, it will be a free chat so any AAVSO/Citizen Sky/VSO topic is welcomed. Click here to login via a web browser.
03 January	AAVSO Special Notice #227	Unusual Behavior of FS Aur - Outburst Imminent? January 3, 2011: The campaign to monitor activity of the peculiar cataclysmic variable FS Aurigae, as announced in AAVSO Alert Notice 428 (see also AAVSO Special Notice #226), continues. Principal Investigator Dr. Vitaly Neustroev reports that the campaign is going well, and that he is very appreciative of your observing efforts and contributions.
29 December	Southern 10-Star Tutorial	Over at Citizen Sky we just published a Southern Hemisphere version of our 10-Star Training Tutorial. It is similar to the original tutorial except that it includes stars and charts for the Southern Hemisphere and is not focused on epsilon Aurigae.
20 December	ejaavso preprint "Anchoring the Universal Distance Scale Via a Wesenheit Template" by Daniel J. Majaess et al.	http://www.aavso.org/ejaavso
20 December	ejaavso preprint "VX Hydrae: Observation of a Sudden Change in a Pulsating Star" by M. Bonnardeau, S. Dvorak, R. Poklar, G. Samolyk	http://www.aavso.org/ejaavso
17 December	ejaavso preprint "The Variable Star HD 173637" by A. U. Landolt	http://www.aavso.org/ejaavso
16 December	2011 JD Calendar	The 2011 JD Calendar is now available.
15 December	JAAVSO v38 nr2 is now online!	http://www.aavso.org/jaavso-v38n2
15 December	Request Comparison Stars for Variable Star Charts	[Note: If your variable star has an existing sequence, even if it is only one comparison star, please request assistance via CHET. This page is only for variables that have NO comparison stars. Thank you.]

News and Announcements

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