From: Michael Koppelman <lolife
Date: Mon, 13 Mar 2006 08:50:39 -0700
To: Dirk Terrell <terrell
        "AVSON

Great idea, Dirk!

I have had the thought lately that the AAVSO meetings are still a  
little light on the science, IMHO. There are lots of good talks and  
lots of great observations but very little science about the physics  
of these systems. In particular I'd love it if the pros who present  
at the AAVSO meetings would spend a little extra time educating us on  
the underlying physics. This is different from the hardcore science  
of, say, the AAS, in that is it more educational than research, but  
would still be highly valuable. Note that workshops can do this, too,  
but getting a little science education in the context of science  
talks makes sense to me too, especially for an amateur group like  
as well.

We are super lucky to have the likes of Arne, Dirk, John Percy (the  
list goes on and on here). Let's take advantage of them and create a  
new breed of uber amateur.

Micheal
http://www.lolife.com/


On Mar 13, 2006, at 8:32 AM, Dirk Terrell wrote:

> I too would like to see more professional astronomers involved with  
> the
> AAVSO and I know Arne does too. It can be time consuming but for  
> me, it
> has definitely been a rewarding experience. Perhaps we could also
> approach this from the other direction: have amateurs learn more about
> the astrophysics involved with these objects so that they can
> understand what we are trying to figure out about these objects. I
> think a combination of "face time" and Internet interaction would do
> it. It would be time consuming and wouldn't appeal to everyone, but it
> might serve the purpose of getting a few AAVSOers up to speed  
> enough to
> be able to guide others. Just thinking about this off the cuff, I can
> see doing a couple of weeks per year together in a traditional
> classroom setting (perhaps before/after the AAVSO meetings) and also
> Internet work in between (combining theory and observation).
>
> As I said, that might be too costly for a lot of people in terms of
> time and perhaps money. I'd be willing to take a couple of weeks of
> vacation time to come and lead classes on things like stellar  
> structure
> and evolution, stellar atmospheres, binary stars, analysis of
> eclipsing/spectroscopic binaries, computational astrophysics and
> introduction to astrophysics. If there are people who want to learn, I
> will come teach.

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