News and Announcements


02 March	View your VPHOT data with VStar!	A new version of VStar has just been released, and along with it, a plugin that will allow you to upload data to plot in the AAVSO Extended File Format. Which means... you can now view your data as output by VPHOT. To download VStar or read more about it, please visit this page: http://www.aavso.org/vstar-overview To read more about the VStar plugin mentioned above or download it or one of the other ones for your own use, see this page: http://www.aavso.org/vstar-plugin-library
25 February	AAVSO Bulletin 74 for 2011	Predicted Dates of Maxima and Minima of 381 Long Period Variables for 2011
24 February	AAVSO Alert Notice 431	Request to monitor SDSS074545 for HST Observations February 25, 2011: Dr. Paula Szkody (University of Washington) has requested our help in monitoring the cataclysmic variable SDSS074545 (SDSS J074531.91+453829.5) for upcoming Hubble Space Telescope observations. The HST observations are scheduled to be made during the week of 2011 March 7-14. Dr. Szkody also observed this object with HST in October-November 2007 (see AAVSO Alert Notice 359).
23 February	Standard Stars in VSP	The 2009 Landolt UBVRI Equatorial Standard Fields are being added to VSP. Descriptions of all the fields are included in the tables below. In order to plot them you need to enter the coordinates and size of the field you want.
22 February	20 Million Observations	On Feburary 19, 2011 the number of observations in the AAVSO International Database surpassed the 20 million mark. It is fitting that this milestone was achieved during our 100th anniversary. Below is some information about the achievement.
15 February	VSP Improvements
15 February	AAVSO Special Notice #235	Request for archival data: V1647 Ori and McNeil's Nebula
14 February	AAVSO Special Notice #234	Outburst of FS Aurigae
10 February	100th Spring Meeting of the AAVSO	A milestone anniversary and a joint meeting with the AAS! May 21-26, 2011 Boston, MA An archive for this meeting will be available on the AAS web site shortly.
10 February	Database Errors Reported	Some observers in the chat room are reporting that their observations submitted since November 11, 2010 are not showing up in our online tools. Doc and Matt will investigate this first thing in the morning (eastern) and update this page when they know more information. We apologize for this inconvenience.
08 February	MyNewsFlash Subscription Form	A new tool for adding, removing and updating your MyNewsFlash accounts is now online. You can visit it at this URL: http://www.aavso.org/mynewsflash
07 February	AAVSO Special Notice #233	Bright outburst of the cataclysmic variable SDSS J133941.11+484727.5
05 February	AAVSO Special Notice #232	Note: This Special Notice was originally issued as AAVSO Special Notice #231; #232 is the correct number.
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

News and Announcements

Request for archival data: V1647 Ori and McNeil's Nebula

A milestone anniversary and a joint meeting with the AAS!

May 21-26, 2011 Boston, MA

Approaching An Important Milestone!

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May 21-26, 2011
Boston, MA