Columbia University Departments of Astronomy and Physics New
43 Columbia University Departments of Astronomy and Physics New York, New York 10027 @S0002-7537~99!00801-X# This report covers the period September 1997 through During 1997-8 the activities of the Center for Backyard August 1998 and comprises an account of astronomical Astrophysics expanded. This is a network of astronomers, research carried out in the Department of Astronomy and the primarily amateur, who do stellar photometry with small Department of Physics. telescopes in their backyards. We typically observe a star Faculty and Research Associates were James Applegate, steadily for a few months, trying to amass the densest pos- Elena Aprile, Norman Baker, William Craig, Arlin Crotts, sible coverage by stressing long observation and distribution Karl-Ludwig Giboni, Charles Hailey, Jules Halpern, David of observers in longitude. This provides a time series well Helfand, Philip Kaaret, Stephen Kahn, Marc Kamionkowski, suited to the study of periodic signals, and immunized from Laura Kay ~Barnard!, Karen Leighly, Lloyd Motz ~Emeri- the ‘‘aliasing’’ problems inherent in data from a single site. tus!, Reshmi Mukherjee ~Barnard!, Robert Novick ~Emeri- The principal observers are in Belgium, Denmark, Maryland, tus!, Frederik Paerels, Joseph Patterson, Kevin Prendergast, Arizona, Illinois, New Zealand, and Australia. Occasional Andrew Rasmussen, R. Michael Rich, Malvin Ruderman, contributions also arrive from Russia, South Africa, Israel, Daniel Savin, Edward Spiegel, Marco Tavani, Wilhelmus Japan, and Chile. A grant from the Research Corporation van der Veen, and Jacqueline van Gorkom. enabled us to make this expansion in the scale of activity. Graduate students participating in research were Elizabeth Patterson and Kemp spent most of their time on this enter- Blanton, Ari Buchalter, Alex Casti, Tzu-Ching Chang, prise.
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