From the Director

This has been an exciting and productive year for the AAVSO. I want to share with you some highlights of what we have been doing.

We have published a revised Manual for Visual Observing of Variable Stars; published and distributed a CD-ROM of all AAVSO charts; placed 15 years of JAAVSO articles on the NASA/Astrophysics Data Systems (ADS) electronic listing; brought the publication of the JAAVSO up-to-date; further streamlined and automated the handling of incoming observations; updated our MS-DOS and web-based data entry software and released a new program for users of Microsoft Windows; added an on-line chart search engine to our website; automated the chart-making process; expanded our Internet presence; and responded to a record high number of requests for data.

Here is a closer look at a few of these accomplishments:

The much-awaited-for AAVSO Manual for Visual Observing of VariableStars was published in an expanded and revised form. Our technical assistant Sara Beck did an excellent job compiling all of the materials we had at hand, and editing the various parts of the Manual. Many of our active observers and AAVSO HQ staff contributed new material to this edition and also made many valuable suggestions along the way. Our member/observer Gene Hanson made a generous contribution to print and distribute it. A heartfelt thanks to all! We have distributed hundreds of copies of the manual-free of charge-to all AAVSO members and observers who requested it (and we will continue to do so). We have also put it on our website in pdf form so that it can be downloaded. The manual has been very well received. A comment from a member/observer summarizes the response we have received:

“...The manual is an excellent source for all observers, and no doubt that it will ease the frustrations of beginning observers and improve the quality of the observation reports. This kind of manual was badly needed!”

The publication of a Compact Disk (CD) of AAVSO Charts is another project that benefited from the teamwork of the AAVSO HQ technical staff and summer students, with contributions from several members. We had been working on this project for several years-formatting, digitizing, and checking all of the AAVSO charts (over 3,000 standard, preliminary, and CCD charts). Thanks to a Small Research Grant from the American Astronomical Society, we were able to publish all of the AAVSO charts on a compact disk. It is being distributed free of charge, except for a small postage and handling fee, to all members and observers. (Read more about this later in this issue.) We have been awarded another grant from the Astrophysical Research Fund to issue an update to this CD. So we are now working hard to make new visual and CCD charts, and to revise charts both in format and with better comparison star sequences, and to make new formatted photoelectric photometry and eclipsing binary charts.

Janet with the next generation of AAVSO'rs - Mike Weier and Angie Manske at the Madison Meeting

The AAVSO website contiues to expand thanks to the efforts of our Webmaster Kate Davis, and our System Administrator and Technology Technical Assistant Aaron Price. We have added new educational tools, including seven more entries to the “Variable Star of the Month,” and a GRB Powerpoint presentation developed by Chuck Pullen online; we have added several new publications; a tribute to members called the “AAVSO Awards and Honors Section”; an “AAVSO in print” section; many very interesting group photographs from the AAVSO archives, taken at AAVSOv meetings as far back as 1915; a chart search engine that allows you to find any chart listed in our catalogs; an improved on-line light curve generator; a self-updating Quick Look file; and a series of technical upgrades to our internet service lines.

In the past six months we made a series of revisions to the formats, procedures, and software associated with submitting observations electronically to the AAVSO, and with processing these data and making them available to the astronomical community. Our goal in making these revisions was to simplify everything both for the observer and for the Headquarters staff. We notified current and potential observers of these changes and new programs via postings on the web, articles in the Newsletter, special mailing, and personal letters to the leaders of variable star groups. Now there is only one format for incoming observations submitted electronically, and monthly reports are no longer required: an observer submits an observation one time only whenever s/he wants. We refer to this new procedure as “One Time! One File! One Format!” Thanks to patience and suggestions from our observers, and continued hard work by the staff, these new procedures are a great success.

The receipt of electronic observations by the staff has now been almost completely automated. The observations are automatically pipelined into the online Quick-Look/Light Curve Generator files every half hour (around the clock, 7 days a week) and stockpiled for monthly processing. Instead of technical staff spending a few (sometimes several) hours every day, it now takes only a few minutes to process a night’s observations. Elsewhere in this newsletter you can read more about the computer programs related to these changes. Observers who choose to send their observations only as monthly reports and on paper can still do so, and of course, we welcome these observations, process and include them in our International Database monthly.

This year we responded to a record number of requests for AAVSO data and information from astronomers, observers, educators, and students. We provided data support for ground-based and satellite (such as Hubble Space Telescope, FUSE and Chandra X-ray Observatory) observations. In addition, a significant number of astronomers are obtaining the data and information they need from materials on our web site such as our News Flashes, light-curve generator, and quick-look files. Most of our data requests come to us via the web.

I am happy to announce that the production of the Journal of the AAVSO (JAAVSO) is back on track and on schedule, thanks to the efforts of production editor Michael Saladyga, assistant editor Elizabeth O. Waagen, and editor Charles A. Whitney. This year we published Vol. 28, No. 2; Vol. 29, No. 1; and Vol. 29, No. 2. More good news: the JAAVSO is now part of the NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS). The ADS Abstract Service is a professional and academic index of many astronomical publications. Included in the system is the table of contents, abstracts, and complete scanned articles for JAAVSO Volumes 13-28 (1984-2000). Several members helped in getting the abstracts of the articles prepared for ADS. This was followed by having the actual articles scanned by ADS staff. We are now working on getting Volumes 1-12 scanned and online so that JAAVSO will be on-line in its entirety.

In addition, this year the AAVSO published the following: AAVSO Bulletin 64; Alert Notices 278 through 288; News Flashes No. 678 through 835; AAVSO Newsletter 25; the 2001 Ephemeris for Eclipsing Binaries; the 2001 Ephemeris for RR Lyrae Stars; AAVSO Solar Bulletin Vol. 56 (9-12) and Vol. 57 (1-7); the Photoelectric Photometry Newsletter, Vol.20, No. 2; the AAVSO Eclipsing Binary Update, number 11; Eyepiece Views, Vol.1, No.1; CCD Views, Vol.2, No. 1 and 2; and the AAVSO Circular, No. 357-360. Since the implementation of the AAVSO website, the Quick Look files and the New Flashes serve the goals that were originally set forth for the AAVSO Circular-to inform the observers and the astronomical community of the activity of some of the interesting variables. At the request of its editor, John Bortle, we terminated the AAVSO Circular in January 2001, 30 years after it was begun. Our special thanks go to John for his dedicated service and also to Charles Scovil for helping John prepare the Circular for publication.

Recently we started two electronic publications: Eyepiece Views for visual observers, and CCD Views. Read more about them in this issue.

New variable star observers with Janet at the TOPS 2001 workshop in Hawaii

Special projects: The AAVSO Gamma Ray Burst Network (GRB)-now with 164 members-is going strong with an active e-mail forum, training in the observation of GRB afterglows, and posting of GRB announcements. Thanks to Arne Henden for his professional mentoring of GRB observers, and to Aaron Price for his technical support of the GRB network; and thanks to a grant from the Curry Foundation, we have distributed pagers to observers for immediate notification of GRB afterglows. In addition, participants of last year's HEA workshop in Huntsville have been giving numerous talks in their local clubs, schools, and public fora. They have prepared online and video presentations. In fact, because of the success of this workshop, together with NASA/Marshall Space Flight Center astronomers, we are going to have the second HEA workshop on the Big Island of Hawaii, between July 4 and 5th, 2002, following the AAVSO Pan-Pacific Spring Meeting there. Due to the enthusiastic response of participants of the AAVSO GRB network and their sucesses, we have been awarded a grant from the Curry Foundation to distribute, on loan, professional quality CCDs to observers around the world so that there is 24 hour coverage of GRB afterglow monitoring.

AAVSO’s education project, Hands-On Astrophysics (HOA): We had two successful HOA workshops this year. One was in Sebring, Florida, organized by our member Chris Stephan, who teaches science to the Middle School there. Our teacher/member Brian Rogan, along with me and Aaron Price, conducted the workshop attended by 18 teachers from elementary, middle, and high schools. One of the highlights of the workshop was meeting Erica Redman (a high school student and a recent AAVSO observer) and hearing about her science projects on the astronomical significance of the Egyptian pyramids. The other HOA workshop was at the TOPS (Towards Other Planetary Sytems) Teacher Enhancement workshop, directed by Dr. Karen Meech (former AAVSO technical assistant). I have been teaching HOA activities and tools at TOPS the past three years. Learning about and observing variable stars is one of the major activities of this workshop, attended this year by 28 teachers and 20 students from Hawaii and the Pacific Islands. Some of the highlights of this year's TOPS workshop was the nova in Scorpio, the Solar eclipse that we watched through the Internet, and meeting one of our members, Jim Bedient, who was a great help at TOPS.

We continue to disseminate HOA kits through the AAVSO and catalog sales of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, and we recently began selling HOA kits through the Sky Publishing Corporation.

The AAVSO Archives project: The AAVSO’s archives are as rich as the AAVSO observation database, and equally as important to maintaining our institutional memory. But over the years, due to limited staff and resources, we have not had the opportunity to properly assess, arrange, preserve, describe, and catalogue our archival files and materials. This year-thanks to a generous contribution from AAVSO member Tom Williams and thanks to contributions from other members-we began the AAVSO Archives Project. This work will be the responsibility of our technical assistant, Michael Saladyga. One long-range goal of this project is to digitize the historically significant papers held by the AAVSO. The archives project will also form the base from which a 100-year history of the AAVSO may be written. In the process of delving into the correspondence files, many interesting items and bits of humor have come to the surface-a selection of these little gems can be read elsewhere in this issue, and we will continue to print more of them in future issues of the newsletter.

Another big project that we have accomplished this year is the much needed revision of our By-Laws. We will be voting on the new By-Laws at our forthcoming Annual meeting. You will find more on this in this issue.

I thank all of you for your support and your many contributions to the AAVSO. I hope to see many of you at the 90th Annual meeting in Cambridge/Somerville/Boston.

—Janet

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