From the Director

Upgrading computer hardware and internet connection. Thanks to a grant from the Theodore S. Dunham Fund for Astrophysical Research, we were able to build a dedicated server to host our web and FTP site this year. We have increased the security and reliability of our headquarters computer systems and have improved the backup system of the materials on the computers. For our internet connection, we have increased the AAVSO internet presence dramatically. We have added the capability to search the website for any page and added an index to all pages on the site. We have added the capability of accessing the AAVSO International Database by plotting the data on any star in the AAVSO observing program online. On this plotted light curve, there is, among other options, the capability of identifying and connecting all observations made by an individual observer. We have also added the capability of requesting the data from the AAVSO technical staff automatically via the web. We have added over 1400 preliminary charts, including quite a number of "reversed" charts for Schmidt-Cassegrain telescopes. This is in addition to 1100 standard charts that were already on the web. We continued to put the preliminary charts, as we scanned them, on the web and for this we thank our members who have been helping us in scanning the charts, namely Carl Feehrer, Lenny Abby, Bob Leitner; our summer students Mike Gutner and Andrea Motta; and our headquarters staff Kerriann Malatesta, Gamze Menali, Aaron Price, and Randal Milholland, who have been posting the charts on the web. Our thanks also to Charles Scovil, who continues to revise these charts using new digital technology, and to Mark Biesman, who creates "reversed" charts from the newly-revised charts.

Some interesting web statistics. From September through April 1999, the number of hits on our website has totalled over 1 « million, and over 570,000 pages have been downloaded. We have had about 43,000 individual visitors, many repeat visitors, and over 400,000 charts have been downloaded from the web. We have gotten enthusiastic comments from our observers and members such as "Your website is fantastic. Keep up the good work!" from John W. Chesney. "The site generally is excellent..congratulations on the continual upgrades to a growing and demanding site" from Lewis Cook. "Having the charts online is a big plus-it's really helped me add more stars to my program and to increase my monthly totals" from Shawn Dvorak. Presently, we are working on completing the placing of all our charts on the web, expanding the information, particularly about AAVSO committees, on the web, and also redesigning our website so that it is easier to see the immense amount of material it contains.

Requests for data. We have responded to a record number of requests, with a significant number of the requests coming through the web. In addition, we continuously receive messages from our colleagues and a lot of researchers saying that they have gotten whatever information they need on a star directly from our website, thus not requiring us spend the time in sending the information to them.

AAVSO's Education Project, Hands-On Astrophysics. This unique educational curriculum is now being disseminated both nationally and internationally. We are distributing it both through the Astronomical Society of the Pacific's catalog and also recently through the Eisenhower National Clearinghouse (ENC). ENC identifies effective curriculum resources and disseminates useful information and products to improve K-12 mathematics and science teaching and learning. ENC is the largest curriculum database in the world. In addition, we are disseminating it through our Headquarters. In March, we displayed Hands-On Astrophysics in Boston at one of the largest-ever National Science Teachers Association (NSTA) meeting, where thousands of teachers were exposed to this curriculum (see p. 4). Later, as one of the three persons invited from the International Astronomical Union (IAU), I presented a talk on Hands-On Astrophysics at the VIII UN/ESA Workshop on Basic Space Sciences in Jordan, at which there was a great deal of interest internationally. John Percy also discussed HOA in another U.N. meeting held in Austria. Our efforts have resulted in the United Nations Basic Space Science Division endorsing Hands-On Astrophysics as one of the strongest educational curricula. Science education personnel in five countries with U.N.-sponsored telescopes are receiving copies of HOA in order to set up both educational and observational programs. Later, we introduced HOA to 50 teachers and students in Hawaii and the Pacific Islands at a workshop that was sponsored by our former technical assistant, Karen Meech, who is now a world-renowned astronomer. Many of our members are disseminating information on HOA in their own communities and we very much appreciate their efforts. In particular, I wish to recognize and thank Ray Berg, Ken Luedeke, Gary Sampson, Brian Rogan, and Kristine Larsen, among others.

New hires at Headquarters. We are adding a new member to the technical staff in September, Kate Davis, who will help us with the evaluation of our data so that we can publish the data faster. In addition, in January we are adding another Ph.D. astronomer to our staff, George Hawkins, who comes from Space Telescope Science Institute and who has been working with the Guide Star Catalog team there. He comes with great expertise in working with large databases, and also his specialty is red variables, so we look forward to working with him both in the study of the data that we have and also with chart revisions.

Other activities. Thanks to a grant that we received from the American Astronomical Society, we are now preparing all of our charts to be put on compact disc so that within the year we will have a compact disc (CD) of existing AAVSO charts which will be available to anyone who is interested for only a small fee to cover postage and handling.

We had a very fruitful, informative, and exciting first-time joint meeting with the Astronomical Society of the Pacific and the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada this year in July, at which the theme for the ASP symposium was Partners in Astronomy. In a continuation of that theme, I am happy to inform you that the American Astronomical Society has set up a new Working Group for Professional and Amateur Collaboration (WGPAC) which I am chairing. The mission of this particular working group is to inform the professional community at large of the extensive collaboration that exists between professionals and amateurs and to encourage further collaborations.

We are revising the AAVSO Variable Star Observing Manual, which we hope to finish before the end of the year. In addition, we are finalizing the preparation of the proceedings of the AAVSO meeting in Switzerland and we are planning to publish it before the end of the year.

As we come close to the end of our fiscal year, I want to thank all of our observers for their valuable observations, particularly all our observers who try to send us their observations in standard format as we have requested. I thank all of our members for supporting the organization, and I hope we will see a lot of you at our annual meeting this year in Hyannis on Cape Cod. I wish you a productive and fruitful autumn.