From the Director

Wearing the glove he wore in space during the December 1999 servicing mission of the Hubble Space Telescope, NASA astronaut John Grunsfeld poses with AAVSO Director Janet Mattei and President Lee Ann Willson.

AAVSO website - Our Internet connection has totally changed the way we operate. It is hard to think of the times when we did not have our Internet connection and website--and that was only five years ago. We continue to develop our website to better serve our members, observers, and the astronomical community. Last spring we have placed on line a new website and have extensively increased our internet presence with many new resources for our members, observers, and the astronomical community. Here are some of the highpoints on our website -

• We have added more features for the light curve generator;
• We have added evaluated, downloadable data on about 400 long period variables,
• We continue to add more finder charts
• We have expanded our committee pages
• Just recently we have added an on-line program which allows you to submit your observations via our website, without the need for additional software or following special formats.

AAVSO Gamma Ray Burst Network - We have entered into a new era of variable star research - Gamma Ray Burst afterglows (GRB). Together with the GRB team at NASA Marshall Space Flight Center, we organized a very successful, ground breaking workshop on High Energy Astrophysics for Amateur Astronomers. You will find more on that in Dan Brennan's article in this Newsletter and also on our website. This was an extremely fulfilling workshop attended by dedicated amateurs from around the world. Already participants of this workshop have made many presentations on the information that they received at this workshop. In addition, we have created an electronic rapid response GRB alert network. Already three of our members and their team have detected GRB afterglows - Warren Offutt of New Mexico, Bill Aguino and his team at Buffalo Astronomical Society, and just recently, Bill Dillon, and his team at Fort Bend Astronomical Club of Texas.

We have been featured in the February issue of Scientific American and the website of NASA (http://science.nasa.gov).

With the observations that you, our observers, provide we continue to serve both ground-based and space-based variable star research. We have had exciting collaborations in which your observations helped in the scheduling of observartions with the Hubble Space Telescope, Far Ultraviolet Space Explorer (FUSE), Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer (RXTE), Chandra X-ray Satellite, and the Extreme Ultraviolet Explorer (EUVE). In fact, the Director of the EUVE granted the AAVSO three days of observing time with the EUVE, as a token of appreciation of our contributions to that satellite. We have been featured in the websites of EUVE (http://www.cea.berkeley.edu) under science highlights, RXTE (http://gsfc.nasa.gov) and Chandra X-ray satellite (http://chandra. harvard.edu) under Chronicles.

Our education program, Hands-On Astrophysics: Variable Stars in Math, Science, and Computer Education continues to gain national and international recognition. It is the major curriculum for the exciting Teacher/Student workshop (Towards Other Planetary Systems - TOPS), in Hawaii each summer. It was hightlighted through presentations during the International Astronomical Union Genral Assembly in Manchester, UK.

We have added another Ph.D. astronomer to the staff - George Hawkins who comes to the AAVSO from Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI). George who was involved with the Guide Star Catalog, is working on computerizing the chart making process using CCD measurements and extending the comparison star sequences to fainter magnitudes. In addition, together we are studying the AAVSO data on long period variables which he specializes in. We have already placed about a dozen charts with CCD comparison star magnitudes on our website, and a paper analyzing the longterm behavior of R Centauri is ready to be submitted for publication.

We have completed the revision of the AAVSO Manual for Observing Variable Stars. We will be distributing it to our members and observers as soon as it is printed.

AAVSO have been well represented in many meetings, including the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, the Astronomical League, the American Astronomical Society, and the International Astronomical Union, thanks to the efforts of Ray Berg, Gene Hanson, Chuck Pullen, Dan Kaiser, John Percy, Elizabeth Waagen and myself. We now have a nice and portable professional quality display that can be mailed for anyone who wishes to use it.

It has been a productive year. As we start the new fiscal year, we are looking forward to another fruitful year and we are getting ready for an exciting Annual meeting at the beautiful, and state of the art site of the Massachusetts Medical Society Headquarters. On behalf of the contributions to the AAVSO.

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