Meeting Memories

I think this joint meeting was marvelous. My expectations were completely overflowed.

The AAVSO Meeting was very interesting and specially the talk by David Levy about Tombaugh's star was great. I think that it's really enough reason to take part in this kind of event in order to meet people who were only known before by mail, and who share with one the love for variable star observing.

The Partners in Astronomy Symposium was one of the most exciting, because I'm really involved in this kind of relationship. Everything was great, but I would like to remark that I really enjoyed the students' work (incredible!), the Wednesday morning talk by Leif Robinson (what a work!), the long panel led by Janet Mattei on researched-based science education (everyone giving exciting options) and the amateur projects like TASS and CBA, and also the nice talk by Lee Ann Willson about AAVSO and Iowa State University.

One of my exciting expectations is "astro-mining" as one of the wonderful works to be done in the near future by amateurs.

Of course, our semiannual meetings are always a great time to renew old friendships, make new ones, and hear some great papers about variable stars. This year's meeting in Toronto was special in several respects, due to its international flavor and the presence of two other venerable astronomical organizations: the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, and our hosts, the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada. At every function, we had a good mix of people from each organization.

It was a great opportunity for us to evangelize a bit about the merits of variable star observing. I was walking back to my hotel one evening with a member of the ASP, who offered the opinion that variable star observing was "about as exciting as watching paint dry." I asked him to imagine how it would feel to be the first observer in the world to catch a cataclysmic variable on the rise, to phone that observation in to AAVSO Headquarters, and have a multimillion dollar spacecraft in earth orbit swing around to gather UV or X-ray data on the star just hours latter. He agreed that would be much more exciting than watching paint dry!

I was pleased to see a good crowd standing around the AAVSO's new display booth during breaks between the talks. Elizabeth and Rebecca are ambassadors we can all be proud of. I'm sure that we'll gain many new members through their efforts.

After the individual meetings of the three societies, the meeting entered a second phase on joint discussions about amateur-professional cooperation. Unfortunately, I was not able to attend this portion of the meeting, but did manage to hear Janet's tour-de-force talk on the contribution of AAVSO observers before quietly slipping out to catch my plane. I'm sure she made a great impression on those having a desire to make a real contribution to astronomy. A big thank-you to the RASC, ASP, AAVSO staff, and our own John Percy for putting together such a great meeting. I hope we'll do something similar in the not-too-distant future.