AAVSO Newsletter 31: Awards and Recognition

The Director's Award is awarded at the Director's discretion in the form of a plaque to an outstanding observer who contributes to special observing projects. The most recent recipients are:

Director's Awards

Solar Observer Awards

Solar Observer Awards are certificates presented to solar observers who have reached milestones of 1000, 1500, and 2000 sunspot observations. In 2004 a new SID awards program was put in place that will allow SID observers to get recognition for their efforts. In recognition of outstanding solar division contributions, the most recent solar observer awards were presented to:

Solar Observer Awards

GRB Award

This year the AAVSO proudly presented the very first GRB Discovery Award. This plaque is awarded for the discovery of a gamma-ray burst optical afterglow by an amateur astronomer. The award was announced at the 93rd Annual Meeting of the AAVSO in Waltham, Massachusetts, on October 30, 2004. The first ever receiptient of the AAVSO GRB Discovery Award is:

GRB Awards

Observer Awards

Without the nightly observations of amateur astronomers, the professional astronomer would find it difficult, if not impossible, to collect the quantity of data that is needed to further the study of stars, the Sun, novae and supernovae, comets and meteors. Variable star observers who contribute their observations to the AAVSO constitute the foundation of our organization and their observations comprise the AAVSO International Database.

The Observing Achievement Award is a certificate presented to those observers who have submitted to the AAVSO 10,000, 25,000, 50,000, 100,000, or 250,000 visual observations and 1,000, 2,500, 5,000 or 10,000 Photoelectric and CCD observations.

94th Spring Meeting, Las Cruces, NM, March 25-26, 2005

93rd Spring Meeting, Berkeley, CA, July 20-24, 2004

The 2004 AAVSO Symposium on Mira Companions & Planets

April 26, 2004
Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA)

The AAVSO held the first of what we hope are annual one-day symposia on variable star topics. Among the goals of these symposia is to increase awareness of your observational data among the professional community and to share the latest in professional research with the observers. Our inaugural symposium was MC’d by AAVSO past-president Dr. Lee Anne Willson. Speakers and topics presented were:

Dr. Wesley Traub (CfA), "The Mira Imaging Project: Near-IR, VLBA, and Thermal-IR"
Dr. Margarita Karovska (CfA), "Miras and Their Companions"
Dr. Lee Anne Willson (Iowa State), "Planets in Mira winds - models, some detection limits, and the fates of the planets in our solar system."
Dr. Matthew Templeton (AAVSO), "Mira Data in the AAVSO International Database."

All of the talks were recorded and digitized by AAVSO observer and member Richard Kinne. They are available for download in Quick Time (.MOV) format along with the PowerPoint presentations by each speaker at this URL: http://www.aavso.org/aavso/meetings/mira2004.shtml