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News from the Society for Astronomical Sciences Vol . 9 No. 2 (April, 2011 ) Triennial Election of SAS the powerful Wilson-Devinney (WD) follows the general style of regular program used by most professionals in papers. These should be sent to the Committee the field. PHOEBE is a cross-platform Program Committee (prior to the April The SAS is a non-profit public benefit (Linux/Unix, Windows, OS X) graphical 16 deadline), to be included in the pub- corporation incorporated in California, program that greatly simplifies the use lished Proceedings. of WD. which is managed by a Board of Direc- tors. The Directors are elected for 3- The workshop will consist of a mix of year terms by the membership. The lecture-style background information SAS 2011 Symposium: current Directors’ terms of office will and hands-on analysis of real data. end on June 1, 2011. Accordingly, the Registration Information 2011 Symposium will include a brief Dirk Terrell is an astrophysicist at the 2011 marks the 30 th Anniversary of the business meeting to elect 7 Directors Southwest Research Institute's De- Society for Astronomical Sciences! to hold office for the next three years. partment of Space Studies in Boulder, This year’s Symposium is shaping up Colorado. His research work focuses The following candidates will be pre- to offer a diverse array of talks, work- mainly on theoretical and observa- shops, and networking opportunities, sented to the Membership for approval tional aspects of close binary stars. He as Directors, to serve from June 2, so you do not want to miss out. The has contributed to the development of schedule of papers is on page 4. 2011 through June 1, 2014: both WD and PHOEBE. LeRoy Snyder Registration information is available on “Developing and Using Your Re- the REGISTRATION page of the SAS Robert Stephens mote Observatory” , presented by Robert Gill website ( www.SocAstroSci.org ). Pric- Tom Krajci and Tom Smith. This work- ing prior to May 1 is: Brian Warner shop will cover practical aspects of Jerry Foote automating your observatory so that Workshops: $ 50 (each) Dale Mais you can run your telescope and in- Symposium: $ 30 (SAS members) Robert Buchheim struments from the warmth of your Under the Bylaws of the SAS, mem- home, be it 100 feet or 10,000 miles $ 50 (non-Members) away. Our two presenters have a bers may nominate alternate candi- Banquet: $33 (per person) dates at the meeting, in which case a wealth of experience in this subject. SAS Membership: $ 25/yr written ballot must be taken to select The schedule and price for these the 7 Directors. If no alternate candi- workshops is available on the REGIS- Prices go up after May 1. The dead- dates are nominated, then those listed TRATION page of the SAS website line for registrations (for the Sympo- above may be approved by voice vote. (www.SocAstroSci.org) sium and the Workshops) is May 16. The banquet will be a prix-fixe dinner Workshops at 2011 SAS in the banquet hall of the Northwoods Reminder: Deadline for Resort. In addition to good food, good Symposium Papers cheer, and good wine (cash bar), the banquet will include the inevitable raf- The SAS 2011 Symposium will be If your paper has been accepted for preceded by two half-day educational fle – some items that you will covet, presentation at the Symposium, the and others that you will wonder about. workshops (to be held on Tuesday, deadline for the final text (to be pub- May 24, 2011). These will be: lished in the Proceedings) is April 16, Your Symposium Registration fee in- “Hands-on Analysis of Eclipsing 2011. Please send the final version to cludes the keynote lecture after the Binary Light Curves”, presented by the Program Committee at pro- banquet. Our speaker is Dr. Petrus Dirk Terrell. [email protected]. Jenniskens, who will describe “"The impact and recovery of 2008 TC3". You've gotten great photometry of an This is quite a story, which combines eclipsing binary. Now what? This If you are preparing a Poster Paper, science, exotic travel, and adventure, workshop will show you the basics of you are invited to provide either (a) a and will be of interest both to scientists analyzing light curves using the one-page summary, (b) a single PDF and their non-scientist guests. PHOEBE program which is based on of the entire poster, or (c) a paper that Society for Astronomical Sciences Newsletter Vol 9 Number 2 The SAS Symposium is held at the Northwoods Inn, in Big Bear, Califor- nia. Big Bear is located in the San Bernardino Mountains, about a 2 hour drive east of Los Angeles. If you plan on staying at the Northwoods Inn, re- member that hotel is not included in the Symposium registration. Do ask the Northwoods for the special confer- ence rate on your rooms. Asteroid Lightcurve Data Archive at the Minor Planet Center Our last Newsletter reported on Brian Warner’s presentation of the Asteroid Light Curve Data Exchange Format (ALCDEF) at the AAS Division of Planetary Sciences meeting (Pasa- dena, September 2010). It is hoped that ALCDEF will become the standard format for archiving and retrieving asteroid lightcurve observa- tional data. This is important because ALCDEF enables researchers to re- trieve, manipulate, and analyze the actual observational data – brightness vs. time – which is the unambiguous phenomenon. Most published papers contain only the results of analyses The Big Bear Solar Observatory is a striking feature on Big Bear Lake. Unfortunately, (such as inferred rotation periods), because of ongoing installation work for the NST (in the large dome), no public tours which might be superseded by addi- are scheduled for the summer of 2011. tional or later data. A huge step was taken when the Minor Planet Center agreed to host the ar- particular asteroid, and your conclu- it will be in the \MPO\DOCS directory. chive of asteroid time-series photome- sions have been published (e.g. in the Or you can get it from try in ALCDEF format. This puts the SAS Proceedings , or the Minor Planet archive under the custody of a well- Bulletin ), your time-series photometry http://www.bdwpublishing.com/Manual recognized, well-managed, funded, is still valuable for a variety of addi- s/UsersGuide_V10.pdf and long-lived organization. All of your tional uses (e.g. shape modeling). If you have questions regarding asteroid lightcurve data can thus be You did a lot of work to collect all that ALCDEF or how to generate files in made available to researchers around light from the asteroid, so please con- Canopus, first check the ALCDEF the world, just as your astrometry data sider submitting it into the ALCDEF page on MinorPlanet.info are available when you submit them to archive. You will be doing a good the MPC. Attribution information for deed. As the Man said, “Let your light http://www.minorplanet.info/alcdef.html data is included in an ALCDEF file so shine before men, so that they may There you'll find a link to download the that you can get proper credit. see your good works”. standards document. The data archive began with a goodly Those of you who use MPO Canopus If your data are not in Canopus and population of observations, and it is for your asteroid lightcurve projects you want to participate, contact Brian growing nicely as more small- can do this easily. The recent version Warner and he’ll help you get your telescope researchers put their current (V10.3.0.0 and later) of Canopus will data out of the dusty filing cabinet. and past observations into the MPC generate ALCDEF files, ready for sub- archive. It currently contains over mission to the Minor Planet Center's By the Way: If you are an infrequent 800,000 data points, on 1475 asteroids ALCDEF page. user of the Minor Planet Center’s data or services, you may need to update Don’t hide your data: After you’ve http://minorplanetcenter.net/light_curve your link. The new address is: completed analyzing your data on a The most recent version of the http://minorplanetcenter.net/ Canopus Users Guide includes tutori- als on generating an ALCDEF- compliant file. If you recently upgraded 2 Society for Astronomical Sciences Newsletter Vol 9 Number 2 Symposium Sponsors We are grateful to our loyal Sponsors, Their fine products have facilitated many small-telescope research en- whose support is critical to making the annual Symposium on Telescope Sci- deavors. ence possible. Please remember them when you are adding to your observing equipment. Contact information http://www.planewave.com/ http://www.bisque.com/sc/ http://www.sbig.com http://www.ccd.com http://www.dc3.com http://www.skyandtelescope.com/ 3 Society for Astronomical Sciences Newsletter Vol 9 Number 2 SCHEDULE FOR SAS 2011 Technical Sessions (subject to change without notice) Wednesday 5/25 Time Coffee/Registration 08:00 08:45 Welcome 08:45 09:00 Robert Naeye In Search of Other Worlds 09:00 09:30 R. Jay GaBany Good Science With Modest Instruments 09:30 10:00 Debra Ceravolo Spectral Mapping: A Scientific Approach to "Pretty Pic- 10:00 10:30 ture" Imaging Coffee Break 10:30 10:45 Brian Warner ALCDEF: Save the Lightcurves! 10:45 11:00 Lance Benner Radar Observations of Asteroids 11:00 11:45 SAS Board SAS Elections 11:45 12:00 Lunch 12:00 13:30 Russ Genet Telescopes from Afar 13:30 14:00 Peter Ceravolo The Wide-field Cassegrain: Exploring Solution Space 14:00 14:30 Eric Craine, Brian Craine, Erin The Sky Brightness Data Archive (SBDA) 14:30 15:00 Craine Coffee 15:00 15:15 Olivier Thizy Pro/Am Spectroscopy Collaborations 15:15 15:45 Robert Gill Hi-Res Littrow Spectrograph 15:45 16:15 Kodiak Darling (Doug Walker stu- Visual Binary Observations 16:15 16:45 dents) Sponsor Infomercials 16:45 17:15 Thursday 5/26 Coffee 08:00 08:30 John Hoot Point and Shoot Astronomy 08:30 09:00 Robert A.
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