AAVSO Chart Team and Comparison Star Database Working Group Annual Reports

Below are the reports from the AAVSO Chart Team and the Comparison Star Database Working Group. They detail progress made over the past year in making new charts and documenting existing charts. They also touch on goals for the next year. We present the reports below for those unable to attend the meeting.

We are especially proud of the large number of volunteers for each project. These reports are also one small way they get credit for all the work they have been doing behind the scenes. We all owe them a pat on the back for their work.

Aaron Price
Chart Team Administrator & HQ Liason
Comparison Star Database Working Group Cosponsor

From: Mike Simonsen
AAVSO Chart Team Annual Report
October 2003

In June 2003 AAVSO established a new chart team, whose job it is to assist HQ in the creation of new variable star charts, as well as maintaining, correcting and revising the existing catalog. The members of the team are all volunteers who bring a wide variety of expertise, talent and interests to the group, but share one goal in common, the creation of the best charts possible for AAVSO observers. Communications and coordination are done through a private Yahoo discussion group as well as personal email correspondence. Aaron Price is the chart team administrator and liaison for HQ. Mike Simonsen is the chart team leader, and Charles Scovil has acted as senior advisor and mentor to the team. Arne Henden is acting as technical advisor on all things photometric and holds our feet to the fire to maintain the highest professional standards. The other contributing members of the team are (in alphabetical order): Marc Biesmans Richard Huziak Mati Morel Vance Petriew Bob Stine Bruce Sumner Dan Taylor Christopher Watson

From the beginning of June through the end of September 2003 the chart team has published 222 new and revised variable star charts, 24 blazar charts as part of an ongoing collaboration with GLAST, and alert notice charts for 3 novae and 3 SN.

We hope to impress AAVSO members with not only the quantity, but, the quality of these new charts. Each chart goes through a rigorous checking process before being deemed ready for release to the public.

The majority of the field calibrations used to create the new sequences come from Arne Henden, USNOFS; and Ronald Zissell. Doug West and Tim Hager have also contributed CCD(V) and color information for the creation of or completion of sequences for new charts.

Other useful sources of photometry that should be mentioned are ASAS-3 for southern fields, and TASS in the northern sky. We are learning to use these publicly available data sets to our advantage in the sequence making process.

Our future plans are to: 1-Continue to draw new and revised charts for stars with existing reliable photometry. 2-Correct charts with errors reported to the AAVSO website. 3-Make cosmetic upgrades to the worst of the worst charts. 4-Obtain more photometry with which to make new sequences accurate to +/-0.03V.

Mike Simonsen (SXN)
October 18, 2003

In February 2003, the AAVSO announced the creation of the Comparison Star Database Working Group (CompDB Project) to start digitizing the current AAVSO charts. The goal of the project is to document all the comparison stars, variables and suspect variables labeled on each chart and store them in a database. The database will be part of the automated chart program the AAVSO hopes to build in the near future. The shear amount of manual work that is involved in creating such a database would be far too costly to hire someone to do so this project is being done by AAVSO members. It is an excellent example of how skilled amateur astronomers can accomplish complex, labor intensive tasks at little or no cost to the organization.

The first couple of months were spent working on the data requirements and how best to communicate and share information. Brian Skiff got us started on the right foot with his knowledge of astronomical catalogs and their formats. The team started documenting a few charts to see how it would work. We ran into many different scenarios because of the variety of charts in the AAVSO arsenal. To keep the timelines short, the team decided to break the project into phases and minimized the information gathered off the charts.

In April I was asked to be the team leader for the CompDB project and very shortly afterwards, I set out to bring all the data together into a consistent database. This proved to be a huge challenge because if you set the same chart in front of 5 people, you'd get 5 different interpretations of the data. In order to get everyone interpreting the charts the same way, a set of guidelines was developed that addressed problem solving techniques and data formatting issues. During the development of the guidelines, it soon became clear that we needed to make a couple of changes and revisit all the work done to date. So in June, the team went back through the 384 charts (5000+ stars) to date and apply the new guidelines. The resultant data was much more consistent and saved a lot of time during the database import and validation processes. It's upward and onward ever since.

The team has been moving ahead one brick at a time and so far since February, the team has managed to document over 25% of the charts resulting in over 16,000 entries in the database. All the data is being checked twice so the validated database currently sits at just over 10,000 records. There are still likely to be errors in the validated data due to the manual nature of the tasks involved. However, based on the current documentation rate, phase 1 is scheduled to be completed by the summer of 2005. I estimate that by the time phase 1 is completed, the following volunteers will collectively spend close to 10,000 hours in building this database.

Sponsors:
Janet Mattei
Aaron Price

Team Leader:
Vance Petriew (PVA)

Team Members:
Rick L. Merriman (MWR)
Keith Graham (GKA)
Steven Fanutti (FSU)
Arno van Werven (VWA)
Tim Hager (HTY)
Carlo Gualdoni (GCO)
Roy Axelsen (ARX)
Brian Skiff (BAS)
Dan Taylor (TDB)
Joe Maffei (MFJ)
Curt Schneider (SUF)
Christopher Watson (WCH)

Silent Partners from the Chart Team:
Bob Stine (SRB)
Mike Simonsen (SXN)

Because there is no database in the world that contains this kind of data, there is nothing to build upon. Documenting all the AAVSO charts is a very manual task and because of the shear number of charts, MORE VOLUNTEERS ARE ALWAYS WELCOME! Once built, this database will not only have a large impact on processes within the AAVSO but also for the variable star community throughout the world.

Team Leader
Vance Petriew (PVA)
Canada