One of the things that makes AAVSO citizen science projects unique is that the data analysis stage is also open to anyone. AAVSO members and observers aren't asked to simply to collect data for scientists to analyse, but they can do some analysis themselves. This includes steps such as identifying a project/problem/goal, collecting data, performing quality control procedures on it, analysing it and communicating results to others.
The American Association of Variable Star Observers (AAVSO) and the British Astronomical Association Variable Star Section (BAAVSS) are pleased to announce that the variable star observation archive of the BAAVSS is now available through the website of the AAVSO. The BAAVSS archives comprise over 2.5 million variable star observations made mostly by amateur astronomers world-wide over the past 150 years. These data now join the archives of the AAVSO in the AAVSO International Database, which consists of over 25 million variable star observations made by observe
Use this form to access the American Relative Sunspot Number (Ra) as published by the National Geophysical Data Center (which is shut down pending a Federal budget agreement). These numbers reflect what was published by NGDC, and may contain typographical errors. For the official AAVSO value of Ra, see the AAVSO Solar Bulletin for specific month(s) you are interested in.
The AAVSO's volunteer-driven project to digitize paper archives of variable star observations is moving forward, and there have been some exciting developments over the past few months that deserve to be mentioned. Here, I'll summarize some of the happenings in this project, and talk about some of the issues that have arisen at AAVSO and among the volunteers.
These data are formally published for the years 1900 to 2008. For a description of this data set, please click here.
Note: A separate page exists for the data including unpublished times of maxima. Go here for the current data set including the most recent data (through February of the current year).
Long-term observations of long period variable stars are essential to the determination of period, change in period, change in behavior resulting from mass loss and/or evolution, mode of pulsation (fundamental or overtone), internal structure, and phase at specific times for these stars.
