AAVSO CONFERENCE, OCTOBER 2005 - PART 1/4
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John Pazmino
NYSkies Astronomy Inc
www.nyskies.org
nyskies@nyskies.org
2005 November 27
Introduction
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The American Association of Variable Star Observers held its
autumn convention in Newton, Massachusetts, on 13-15 October 2005. I
was the delegate for NYSkies to this convention, by general
statesmanship and a formal presentation. Because the conference was so
full and complex, I break up this summary into four articles, arranged
by theme. This first one is about the convention in general. The others deal
with specific celestial objects, visual observing, and instruments and
facilities. These topics were blended in the actual schedule.
Variable stars
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AAVSO is the world's premier society for the observation and study
of variable stars. It was founded in 1911 and now has about 1,100
members worldwide. I was a member, tho not continuously, since the mid
1960s and attended AAVSO meetings since the 1970s.
Variable stars are stars whose radiation varies with time, between
a brightest to dimmest value. By assessing the brightness, or stellar
magnitude, of these stars, we learned over the years a major fraction
of our present astrophysics. Changes in the radiation output of a star
give crucial clues to changes in the internal processes producing that
radiation.
Variable stars were curiosities of the heavens in the 1700s, with
a few examples recognized as far long ago as the late 1500s. They were
examined on and off with no substantial interest. New specimina were
accidently discovered, accumulating to about a hundred by the 19th
century. In the mid 1800s there arose a realization that a more
careful monitoring of variable stars was needed. Observatories started
to collect records of their brightness changes, as determined by
comparing the variable with stable stars in its vicinity.
In the last decades of the 19th century, astrophysics was
developing, with spectrography revealing the physical and chemical
nature of stars. It was soon found that besides a star's variation of
radiation, in light, there were variations in the spectrum and
temperature.
But the number of variable stars was increasing steadily, thanks
to discoveries made thru photography. The observatory astronomers
couldn't keep tabs on all those stars. Home astronomers assisted in a
fragmented way. They also lacked the special charts with the stable
stars marked near the variable star.
Monitoring variable stars
-----------------------
A variable star is monitored by building a graph of their
brightness versus date. This is the lightcurve. As magnitude
assessments are logged in at AAVSO, they are plotted on the star's
lightcurve against the associated date. Once done manually on graph
paper, this task is now done by computer software reading digital
files of the observations.
Because variable star records span many years or decades. it soon
became clumsy to do maths on normal calendar dates. AAVSO uses the
Julian Day Number, which is a count of days starting from 4713 BC[!].
This chronology, never used in civil life, was invented in the early
1600s but only in the 20th century taken over for longterm records. in
astronomy. The observer converts the calendar date into Julian Day
Number via computer program or a chart. Hours within a day, for stars
of rapid variation, are expressed as decimals of the JDN.
Variable star names
-----------------
When a variable star is discovered and confirmed, it is given a
name. If the star already has a Bayer name, it is left alone with no
new name. The two exceptions are omicron Ceti and P Cygni. These
stars, the first permanent, not a nova, variables, were found a few
years before the Bayer system was issued in 1603. They were assigned
Bayer letters anyway and we left them alone.
Lacking a Bayer name, the star is lettered in order of discovery
within each constellation. The first one is given the capital Latin
letter R. The lettering starts with R because no constellation yet
thru the alphabet in Bayer letters beyond Q. Bayer turned to Latin
letters when he ran out of Greek letters in his naming scheme.
The ninth variable gets letter Z. Future variables are given a
double-letter name. J is omitted and the second letter is equal to or
greater than the first. When all the single and double letters are
used up, 334 variables in the constellation are accounted for,
excluding those with Bayer names.
For more variable stars, a simple number is used, starting with
V335. Hence, a variable star can have names like: beta Lyrae, W Ursae
Majoris, SS Cygni, and V361 Orionis.
AAVSO meetings
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AAVSO was established to organize and centralize the observation
of variable stars. It standardized the observing methods, issued
charts, logged the assessments, distributed data to observatories. It
convened meetings to share work and findings among its members. The
founding sessions were in New York City, then at what is now the
Custer Institute on Long Island. AAVSO eventually moved to Cambridge,
Massachusetts, where it now lives.
The fall meeting is always in Massachusetts, usually in or near
Cambridge for convenience to its offices. They were held as far off as
Nantucket and Hyannis and Williamstown. These meetings are wrapped
around the required annual business meeting of the Association, a
nonprofit corporation.
In the 1970s it started to offer spring meetings. These are hosted
by other astronomy groups in the United States or overseas. By the
early 2000s AAVSO found that having two major conventions each year
was a severe diversion of resources and effort from its mission of
collecting and processing observations of variable stars.
At the 2002 spring meeting in Hawaii, the Association announced
that after 2002 it will hold only spring meetings. There will bo no
more fall conventions, just a business meeting. The conference of 2002
October was to be the final fall session. 2003 and 2004 passed with no
autumn convention.
In late August of 2005, AAVSO issued a notice for a fall
convention, to run in Newton, a western suburb of Boston, in mid
October! The old format of talks, tours, dinner, workshop was on the
schedule!
I signed up and put in for a presentation. I offer a talk at these
conferences to show the world the astronomy of New York. This time I
highlighted the astronomy features in Grand Central Terminal in
'Station at the center of the universe'.
Off to Newton
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On Thursday the 13th of October 205 I was on the 11:00 train out
of Penn Station on my way to Boston. I learned that from Boston's
South St Station there is a local bus that goes to Newton within a
hundred meters of the meeting's hotel.
The weather in New York for several days before was a miserable
nasty downpour that kept people off of the streets. As the train
rolled north toward Boston, the rain stayed with it, lashing at the
windows and splashing thru the open doors at stations. Not terribly
inviting for hunting up a bus in the zigzag streets of Boston.
Adding to the dissuasion were the thick clouds smothering
dayligiht and the retardation of the train from rain-soaked signals.
The rain never let up. I abandoned the bus plan for a taxi. Now
there's no point in going to South Station and then take a taxi back
west, more or less retracing part of the railroad route. The cab would
also have to fight Boston traffic in the early evening rushhour.
I bailed out at Route 128, a station well west of Boston where I
knew there was a taxi pickup area. Yep, waiting at the station exit,
enclosed in a parking garage, were taxis! I hopped into one and off we
went to the Sheraton at Newton Corner. The driver seemed to know his
way, plowing thru the rain along a highway, then veering off to local
streets, and finally scudding to the entrance of the hotel.
The hotel did not have my reservation! As I dickered with the
clerk, I noticed signs for Marriott. The taxi left me at the wrong
hotel! Marriott was really taken aback. It hailed a worker to take me
to the Sheraton in a hotel service van!!
The Sheraton
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The property itself was a bit too much like New York. It is built
straddling the trench for the Massachusetts Turnpike and a suburban
railline. Think of an extra wide overpass with the hotel centered on
it. I checked in and freshened up in my room.
The place is well furnished with all the usual hotel services and
comforts. Nothing out of place or order. However, the building was
infiltrated by noise from the rail and road under it. And it quivered
from their traffic. Such is typical of hotels in New York from similar
road and rail traffic under and around them.
I signed in at AAVSO's table, happy to see colleagues, all of whom
missed the fall conferences as badly as I. My talk was cut onto a CD
for computer projection. This I gave to the table host for loading
into AAVSO's laptop, along with other speakers's CDs.
Presentations
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Over the years I noticed a gentle shift from chemophotographic
slides to digital images. The latter were packaged into a 'slideshow'
thru a program such as PowerPoint. PowerPoint and other presentation
programs have useful and handy functions impossible in ordinary
slideshows. I stayed with the basic go-to-next function and showed my
'slides' in sequence. Other talks included animations, video clips,
fancy transition between slides, even sound effects.
I still take pictures with chemocameras. Years ago I bought a
slide scanner to convert the film images into computer images. It was
out of order! I ran around in Grand Central Terminal in the weeks
before the convention taking all-new pictures with my digital camera.
A few scenes I didn't get I had on slide from previous visits to the
depot. These I sent out for commercial scanning for a nasty fee.
When I compose a PowerPoint file, I first print out the pictures
and label them with their filenames. I shuffle these until I got them
in the order I want for the show. I weed out unwanted images or
substitutes others from elsewhere. Then I build the show by adding the
computer images in that same order. I find this quicker and more
spontaneous than moving images around within PowerPoint.
I usually bring a hometown poster to the meeting. This is a
fixture of mine started on eclipse trip of long ago. I figured that
one way to make acquaintance would be to hang a poster of New York on
my hotel door. This I made up from photocopied tourist books and
pasted on a large paper sheet. Low tack masking tape, gently applied,
keeps it in place for the duration of each stopover along the trip.
Other trippers could see something of my hometown thru the
pictures on the poster. This is far better than carrying around a
picture book to show at each inquiry. The poster also flags my room
from all the other identical rooms in a bland hotel hallway.
For this meeting I had no poster. It was confiscated during the
Hawaii conference! I didn't get around to replacing it. So I hung in
its place my Grand Central handouts. These went over big for nonAAVSO
guests at the Sheraton!
One presentation method endured at this meeting. Some talks
employed viewgraph, or overhead, sheets. These are about as easy to
work with as slides or images. Just in case for some crazy reason my
CD couldn't play, I copied my pictures onto viewgraph sheets and
brought them with me. The CD did play well.
A couple speakers preferred to use posters. They hung on a sidewall
of the meeting hall the text and pictures for their presentation.
During breaks, we examined them and spoke with their authors.
Attendance
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The fall meetings are heavily attended by staff from AAVSO, being
that it's a short ride or drive from Cambridge. Many do not stay at
the convention hotel, but commute for each day of the meeting. A
second contingent comes from local astronomy centers, notably the
Amateur Telescope Makers of boston and the Harvard-Smithsonian Center
for Astrophysics. About 2/3 of the registrations for this meeting came
from Massachusetts, in line with previous conventions.
Total registration was about 70, a little fewer than usual. I
guess the ongoing economic and disaster situation in the United States
may be a partial blame. The actual attendance seemed to me lower, more
like 50. I can accept the atrocious weather for causing airline
disruptions in the Boston area, with flights severely delayed or
cancelled. I, who arrived by rail, was delayed about 1-1/2 hour by a
late departure from the City and slow running along the way. This was
due to rain-soaked signals.
Despite a lower turnout, there were delegates from many other
states and from overseas. Countries represented were Argentina,
Australia, and Canada. England was present via an Internet telecast!
I saw many new faces, maybe new AAVSO members or simply those who
hadn't been at AAVSO meetings before. We elders welcomed them.
General activity
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AAVSO conventions are among the mature and grownup astronomy
meetings the home astronomer enjoys. The crew is professional,
outgoing, attentive, and helpful. Arrangements in past meetings were
virtually always spot on, with few serious foulups.
The routine for the meetings is more or less the same. On Thursday
afternoon and evening there is no formal activity. Delegates are
arriving at all hours, settling in, and exploring the hotel and
surrounds. We gather for supper on our own or in small groups. At this
meeting, with the thoroly snotty rain outside, we stayed indoors and
suppered at the hotel restaurant. It would stay so miserable that we
were cooped up for the whole conference, even tho there were several
eateries within a quarter-K around us.
This preliminary for the formal meeting is the time to renew
acquaintances, catch up on news, discuss topics on the program. With
confinement in the hotel, we could circulate among the delegates to
greet each other.
This is also the time to deploy handouts for the talks. I had two
for my Grand Central talk, flyer for NYSkies, October NYC Events, and
October SpaceWalk from the National Space Society. I held back a few
copies to personally hand out, if the supply ran out before a
particular person picked up a set. Other speakers left their
litterature at the registration table, too.
Presentations began on Friday morning at 9AM with a workshop on
visual observation techniques. The afternoon was the first session for
scheduled talks. Saturday morning was the business meeting and reports
session. The final talks were given on Saturday afternoon.
Friday night took us to the AAVSO offices in Cambridge for a
buffet supper and general bantering. Saturday night was the closing
banquet and keynote speaker. The convention wrapped up after then, to
let us get some sleep and go home on Sunday morning.
Feeding the flock
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One aspect of AAVSO meetings I specially like is the food. You
can't go hungry at one of their conferences! After the supper on
Thursday evening on your nickel, you likely can close your purse for
further meals. The Sheraton included a breakfast with the room. AAVSO
set out coffee, soda, and sweets at the breaks.
We feasted on a buffet supper at AAVSO headquarters and on the
banquet at the hotel. To be honest, these were part of the conference
fee, but you didn't fork over the mullah on the spot. OK, the banquet
started with a cash bar. I indulged in a few scotches.
I could pass up lunch, which was separate from the convention.
Extra cookies, muffins, sodas rescued from the breaks were plenty for
me. There was enough put out for us to liberate a late night snack
before going to sleep!
Continuation
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This is the first of four articles about the AAVSO 2005 October
convention. The articles are named 'aavso05a.htm', '...b.htm',
'...c.htm', '...d.htm'.