AAVSO Website and Technology News

The AAVSO Online Store
What was happening at the AAVSO in 1931? Would you like a new navy polo shirt with the AAVSO logo on it? How about a printed light curve, GCVS Volume III, or a back issue of the JAAVSO? Would you like to read Dorrit Hoffleit's autobiography or learn more about the history of women in astronomy? All of these items plus so much more are now available from the AAVSO's Online Store. The store features a new streamlined shopping approach, pictures for every item, size charts, and up-to-date inventory listings. Now that everything is located in one place, ordering from the AAVSO has never been easier!

Simply visit http://www.aavso.org/store/, shop around and then checkout on our secure server. Members receive discounted prices on most items, so show your AAVSO pride and order something today!

New Data Analysis Software
In the last year we have released some new software packages for data analysis:

* Magplot: MagPlot is a Windows-based tool for analysing light curves of variable stars. It plots simple light curves which can be manipulated by the user and also performs some basic data analysis routines such as polynomial fitting and averaging. MagPlot supports data downloaded via the AAVSO International Databases download data form on our web site. This is the perfect tool for use in getting started in data analysis.

* WinWWZ: This is a new Windows-based version of our WWZ program used for looking for period and amplitude changes in variable star data. This version has an easy point ‘n click interface which displays full color plots of your results and also supports data downloaded from our web site.

A Fortran version of WWZ (along with its sister program TS) is also now available.

We would like to thank Len Abbey for writing MagPlot and Geir Klingenberg as the primary author of WinWWZ. Dr. Matthew Templeton is responsible for the Fortran versions of WWZ and TS. We also acknowledge a grant from the American Astronomical Society's Small Research Grant Program.

Want to Know How Your Observations are Being Used?
In July we began e-mailing monthly reports to observers which summarize how often their observations have been included in data requested from the AAVSO web site. The reports detail which data were requested, by whom, and for what purpose. A sample is below:

STAR	REQUESTER	USE
AL COM	Amateur Astronomer	other
U GEM	Student	science project
SS CYG	Professional Astronomer	basic analysis
U AUR	Student	correlate
OMI CET	Amateur Astronomer	data analysis