From the Director

As we enter the holiday season, I send each and every one of you my best wishes for a very happy holiday season and a wonderful, joyous, and healthy New Year.

HIGHLIGHTS OF THE PAST YEAR

We have had another very active year and I would like to share some of its highlights with you:

• We hit another milestone in the AAVSO International Database with Jean Gunther, our very active French observer and the Secretary of the Association Francaise des Observateurs d’Etoiles Variables (AFOEV), making the 10.5 millionth observation in the database.
• We responded to a record high number of data requests: 331 requests online and 213 requests offline, totaling 544 requests for AAVSO data and information.
• We provided data support for ground-based telescopes and satellites such as XMM, RXTE, Chandra, FUSE, and HST. In addition, a significant number of professional and amateur astronomers and students obtained the data and information they needed from information on our web site such as News Flashes, Light Curve Generator, or the Quick Look File.
• Together with colleagues from NASA/ Marshall Space Flight Center we organized a very successful second High-Energy Astrophysics Workshop for Amateur Astronomers, held in Waikoloa Beach on the Big Island of Hawaii, at which we had a record number of attendees at both the workshop and the AAVSO Spring Meeting that followed at the same location. Many of the invited and contributed papers from the workshop and the meeting are online at the AAVSO web site.
• We published the second CD-ROM of AAVSO charts, containing hundreds of new and revised charts for regular program stars, eclipsing binaries, RR Lyr stars, and photoelectric photometry program stars.
• We resumed publication of Monographs and Monograph Supplements, and published 7 new monographs and 11 supplements.
• We developed many software programs and/or made enhancements to existing programs to contribute data to and access data from the AAVSO web site: we enhanced the Light Curve Generator, speeded up the Quick Look Files, added new features to WebObs, and added an online chart-search engine.
• We enhanced the information in our International Gamma-Ray Burst (GRB) Network site.

Internet Activity and Web Site
We saw a dramatic increase in our web site activity this past year. New features and improvements to the web site included the addition of several educational tools; items, data, and features of interest to our members; and many AAVSO publications. As a result, the number of web pages downloaded from our site increased dramatically – over 215,000 individuals visited our web site (almost double the number from the previous year), with an average of 590 visitors per day. Almost 53,000 light curves were plotted using our Light Curve Generator (about 145 per day). The pages for the Quick-Look File, WebObs, Light Curve Generator, chart search engine, and Variable Star of the Month were among the most popular.

Observations
We received 405, 668 observations from 775 observers around the world last year, bringing our grand total of observations in the AAVSO International Database since 1911 to 10,770,314. Observers from 49 states and territories and 39 countries contributed data to the AAVSO International Database. The top three countries were Canada, Belgium, and Australia. The top three US states were Indiana, Massachusetts, and Michigan. The top five observers were Shawn Dvorak (FL) 9,927, Rod Stubbings (Australia) 10,381; Mike Simonsen (Michigan) 10,844; Gerry Samolyk (WI) 13,033; and Georg Comello (Netherlands) 17,544.

Of course, it is not the quantity of observations that one submits but the quality that really counts. We thank each and every of our 775 observers for their valuable astronomical contributions to the AAVSO.

Publications
In addition to the publications mentioned above we published the Journal of the AAVSO, AAVSO Bulletin (2002 Predicted Dates of Maxima and Minima of 561 Long Period Variables), Alert Notices, News Flashes, CCD Views and Eyepiece Views (two new electronic publications), AAVSO Newsletter, Ephemerides for Eclipsing Binaries and RR Lyrae Stars, Solar Bulletin, PEP Newsletter, and Observed Times of Minima No. 7. In addition, 13 publications with AAVSO participation were published in 2001. Here are some samples of these publication titles:

• “Solar-like Oscillations of Semiregular Variables” by J. Christianson-Darlsgaard, H. Kjeldsen, and J.A. Mattei was published in the Astrophysical Journal, 562, L141; 2001.
• “RX Andromedae, an intermediate between Z Cam and VY Scl stars” by M.R. Schreiber, B.T. Gansicke, and J.A. Mattei was published in the Physics of Cataclysmic Variables and Related Objects, ASP Conference Proceedings, ed. by Bt. Gansicke, K. Beuermann, and K. Reinsch, 26, 545;2002.
• “Statistical Analysis of the Long Term Visual Light Curve Parameters of Dwarf Novae” by T Ak, M.T. Ozkan, and J.A. Mattei was published in Astronomy and Astrophysics, 389, 478; 2002.
• “The Evolution of the Mira Variable R Hydrae” by A.A. Zijlstra, T.R. Bedding, and J.A. Mattei was published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 334, 498; 2002.

GRB Network
The AAVSO International GRB Network was very active this year, with our observers responding to many of the GRB alerts. In fact, just 4 days before the end of the fiscal year, 6 members of the network detected the fading afterglow of GRB 021004. We saw an increase in the GRB Network membership to about 145 this year.

Education and Outreach
We continued to disseminate the AAVSO educational curriculum Hands-On Astrophysics: Variable Stars in Math, Science, and Computer Education through the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, Sky Publishing Corp., and the AAVSO.This year we introduced HOA and variable star observing to over 25 Hawaiian and Pacific island teachers and 20 students through the very successful teacher-enhancement program Towards Other Planetary Systems (TOPS) held on the Big Island of Hawaii just before the HEA workshop and AAVSO Spring meeting there. Many of the teachers who participated in the TOPS program attended our Spring meeting and made presentations on their TOPS work, particularly variable star work, and several of them became members of the AAVSO.

In addition, our member Chuck Pullen gave a workshop for the public at the Davis Star Show in California. Professor John Percy also held a workshop on variable stars using the materials of HOA for the European Association in Astronomical Education (EAAE).

Validation and Certification of Data
We have a very exciting project to accomplish in the coming two years. The project is the validation and certification of all AAVSO data, i.e., carrying out quality control procedures on all the AAVSO data so that they all can be accessible and downloadable from our web site.

This project is the culmination of a very special goal we set in the early 1980’s. In 1984, the AAVSO Council made two projects a priority for our operations: digitization of all AAVSO data going back to 1911 so that the data would be secure and accessible, and publication of the monographs showing long term light curves of a single variable star. A few years ago we completed digitizing and processing the data, thus all data back to 1911 are in electronic form. The one thing that is holding back making all of these data accessible is the validation and certification, i.e., checking these data for discordant points. I am very happy to report that, through the grant we received from NASA Office of Space Science, we can now complete this missing link so that within two years all of the AAVSO data will be accessible through our web site and the web site of NASA/ Infrared Science Archive (IRSA) at California Institute of Technology.

A significant number of the AAVSO technical staff will be working on this project so that we can accomplish it within two years. It is quite a colossal responsibility, but we are certain we will meet our goal and finish the project within this time. I have assigned Rebecca Pellock as Team Leader of this project, and she will be assisting me and leading the team of technical staff in the validation project.

As we validate data, we will make them accessible through our web site so that you and the astronomical community will not have to wait two years to access the data. We will periodically announce the validated data. We are grateful to NASA Office of Space Science for the grant that will make these data accessible to everyone and that will finally complete this very important priority project we identified almost 20 years ago.

Reorganization of Headquarters Activities
This year, we need to prioritize and reorganize Headquarters activities in order for most of the technical staff to spend time validating the data and in order to reduce operations costs. Due to the drop in the stock market, the income from our funds , which are professionally managed, was reduced substantially this past year. However, in comparison to the market drops, our losses are considerably less and the Association continues to be strong.

At the Annual Council meeting, we had long discussions on our operational budget and initiated the following steps:

• For the coming two years, we will have only one full meeting a year. The next meeting will be in Tucson, Arizona, April 25-27, 2003. We will hold a Council meeting in late October or early November 2003 in Cambridge, following which we will have an Annual Membership meeting for reports from Committee chairs, Treasurer, and the Director, and to which members are invited. The next full meeting will be at Chabot Observatory in Oakland, California, together with the Astronomical League and the Association of Lunar and Planetary Observers, July 26-27, 2004.
• We will discontinue publication of monographs, since accessibility of the data through validation of the complete database will make the monographs redundant.
• We will look into other publications and activities to see if we can either reduce or discontinue them.
• We will distribute our publications as much as possible online to reduce printing and postage costs.
• We will continue to automate our operations.

We know the above steps will help in reducing operation costs and we hope you will understand and support us in them. If you have other ideas to help cut operations, we’d like to hear them. On behalf of theAAVSO, and personally, I thank each and every one of you for your astronomical and financial contributions to the AAVSO and I wish you and your loved ones a very healthy and happy New Year.

— Janet

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