M.Saladyga's blog

One of the "knitting jobs" (as Dorrit Hoffleit used to call "spare time" tasks) I have taken on is to update and upgrade the page of meeting group photos. I'm rescanning some of the photos for better quality, adding missing items, and adding identification keys wherever possible. Some of the 1920s photos were published with keys in Popular Astronomy, and many of the photos made in the 1980s and 1990s were routinely distributed with keys, but many other years need closer attention, and I will be adding these from time to time, as time allows.

With the publication of JAAVSO 40.2, the epsilon Aurigae special issue, and JAAVSO 40.1, the 100th anniversary issue, the journal staff will now pause and catch their breath.

While Associate Editor Elizabeth Waagen and I were admiring the look and heft of the printed copies of these two volumes, EOW remarked that the total page count of 40.1 and 40.2 exceeds the number of pages in the first several volumes of JAAVSO. Continue Reading [2]

The AAVSO Centennial may have come and gone with 2011, and the epsilon Aurigae project may be wrapping up, but Headquarters hasn't closed the files yet on these very special events! Look forward to:

• the 100th Anniversary Edition of JAAVSO, due to be published in June, and
• a special edition of JAAVSO on epsilon Aurigae, to be published in December

We're working on them!
  Continue Reading [3]

This picture, taken in 1994, is not what it seems at first glance. The AAVSO staff here are not comparing and contrasting studies of the fire hydrant in front of the former 25 Birch Street Headquarters, they are observing the annular solar eclipse of May 10! Continue Reading [4]

The AAVSO's 75th anniversary celebration was held during August 6-9, 1986, here in Cambridge--exactly 25 years ago this week!

That thought occurred to me this morning as I walked passed the former Birch Street Headquarters from my bus stop to the present-day Headquarters on Bay State Road.

The weather today is as pleasant as it was for that meeting (though a bit more humid and windy then).

Thanks to volunteer data miner/digitizer and AAVSO member Bob Stine of Newbury Park, California, the AAVSO International Database is richer by over 3,200 historical observations of Nova Per Nr. 2 (1901) = GK Per.

The improvement to the accessible light curve for this star is both dramatic and vital, as the data which Bob digitized covers the 18 months following the outburst--from February 18, 1901 to August 8, 1902--as can be seen in the light curve shown here.

Part of a series celebrating 100 years of the AAVSO

The other morning, Doc Kinne, our systems guy, remarked that during the past weeks since breaking the 20M barrier, the AAVSO received over 50,000 variable star observations--or about 25,000 in one week. The remark caused our heads to nod appreciatively for a moment, but then we turned back to our work and thought nothing more of it. It is not that we are blase about it, it's just that our expectations have changed with the times--we expect to receive 20 or 30 thousand observations each week, just as, ten years ago we expected to receive 7 or 8 thousand per week. Continue Reading [11]

Part of a series celebrating 100 years of the AAVSO

This month's AAVSO Newsletter carries an item about one of our 100th anniversary celebratory [14] "events": an AAVSO Trivia Challenge [15], which has already begun online. Continue Reading [13]

First of a series celebrating 100 years of the AAVSO Continue Reading [18]

This summer the AAVSO acquired the entire collection of paper variable star observation reports from the Royal Astronomical Society of New Zealand (RASNZ). The idea for permanently archiving the paper reports of the RASNZ at AAVSO Headquarters came about through conversations between Arne Henden, VSS Director Tom Richardson, and Grant Christie of the RASNZ.

The collection comprises 12.5 linear feet. The reports have not yet been evaluated, so the total number of observations in the collection is unknown, but certainly it is in the tens of thousands if not in the hundreds of thousands of observations. Continue Reading [19]