The AAVSO is accepting proposals to host our 2013 "spring" meeting. Typically these meetings are held away from our HQ in Cambridge, MA sometime in the months of April-July. For the first time, we are experimenting with the process of accepting open suggestions and bids for the location of our next unplanned meeting (2012 will be in Big Bear, CA).

January 27, 2012: The symbiotic variable RT Cru has brightened in hard x-rays. Dr. Jeno Sokoloski, Columbia University, has requested AAVSO assistance in monitoring RT Cru both now and in the future to see if it is doing anything unusual in the optical. The Swift/BAT hard X-ray light curve shows RT Cru has apparently been gradually brightening over the past few years.  

Thanks to the hard work, dedication, and persistence(!) of AAVSO member/observer Péter Molnár and Dr. László Kiss, the January 2010 edition of the "Manual for Visual Observing of Variable Stars" is now available in Hungarian.

http://www.aavso.org/visual-observing-manual-hungarian

If you know of anyone who may benefit from this translation, please spread the word!

The AAVSO is not the only citizen science organization that celebrated its 100th anniversary last year. The American Meteor Society also celebrated it's anniversary. As a token of friendship and appreciation, we sent a certificate mounted on a wooden plaque to Dr. Meisel, Executive Director the AMS. Below is a image of the certificate portion of the plaque. Click for a larger PDF version.

Congrats to the AMS!

Thanks to the efforts of Cheng Simiao, a young and very enthusiastic observer from Beijing, we now have a new, more up-to-date Chinese version of the "Manual for Visual Observing of Variable Stars" available for download. He wishes that this edition be thought of as a 100th birthday present to the AAVSO as well as an 18th birthday gift to himself.

Congratulations and many thanks to Mr. Cheng!

Welcome to the AAVSO Computer History Project

The purpose of this project is to document the history of the Information Technology Infrastructure of the AAVSO, how it came to be, what hardware was used, who were the people involved, and how the technology was used to further the mission of variable star observing and analysis.

December 15, 2011:  IAU CBAT Central Bureau Electronic Telegram 2943 (Daniel W. E. Green, Ed.) announces the discovery of an apparent supernova in NGC 4984 by Koichi Itagaki, Yamagata, Japan, at unfiltered CCD magnitude 12.7 on 2011 Dec. 9.856 UT.

Coordinates: R.A. = 13 08 58.39  Decl. = -15 31 04.1 (2000.0)
SN 2011iy is 16.6" east and 6.1" south of the nucleus of NGC 4984.    

We held another VSP workday this week and tackled a few VSP bugs and feature requests. Most of the changes are minor and I'll list them below. We did not get to everything on the list. Our next workday will probably be in a couple of months. Feel free to submit feature requests or bug reports to aavso at aavso.org.

As always, thanks to Michael Koppelman and Chris Watson for taking time out of their day to help us!

Tis the season
If you’re like many people, you do your major giving toward the end of the year. I think part of the reason is we get caught up in the spirit of the season. The shopping, planning and gift giving is all part of the fun. It feels good. Making a donation to your favorite non-profit organization feels good too.