SUNSET: 
Upcoming Astronomy Events
As a service to our community, Sky & Telescope lists astronomy-related events, including star parties, observatory public nights, astronomy talks, and more. Star parties offer dark skies and astronomical fellowship and often cater to families and feature special activities for kids. Public nights give the general public a chance to view the sky through large telescopes, and public talks are a great place to learn the fundamentals of the science and the craft.
You’ll also see online events offered here.
And if you’d like free copies of Sky & Telescope‘s Let’s Go Stargazing flyer or door prizes for your next star party, you can fill out this form.
How My Students and I Do Science with AAVSO Data – and How You Can Too
May 7, 2022 @ 2:00 pm - 3:30 pm EDT
Free
A free webinar with a large portion devoted to post-instruction Q&A from the audience. Instructor: John Percy
Variable stars provide astronomers with unique and important information about the nature, evolution, and behavior of stars. AAVSO observers contribute mightily to this enterprise. For half a century, I have been engaged in variable star research, and in supervising and mentoring undergraduate research students, and even high school students. They can develop and integrate a wide range of science, math, and computing skills, motivated by the thrill of doing real science with real data – including AAVSO data – and publishing their results in journals such as the Journal of the AAVSO (JAAVSO). Skilled amateur astronomers can do this too, whether they are observers or not! I will lead you through some of our projects using freely-available AAVSO data and, more recently, freely-available ASAS-SN data. You will learn about the particular strengths of these datasets, and about the complementary power of light-curve analysis and time-series analysis, using the AAVSO VSTAR package. I will explain what we do, and how, and why. And I will point out some of the science which can be done – by you and/or your students.
John Percy is a very active Professor Emeritus of Astronomy & Astrophysics and Science Education at the University of Toronto. He has served as president of six national or international science and education organizations, including the IAU Commission on Variable Stars, and the AAVSO (1989-1991). He has been an AAVSO member for over 40 years, was the editor of JAAVSO for 10 years, and continues to serve as co-advisor to the Long-period Variable Observing Section.
