Affiliation
American Association of Variable Star Observers (AAVSO)
Wed, 07/11/2012 - 21:54
As an member and observer over the last ten plus years, I miss "CCD Views" and "Eyepiece Views," which stopped being published several years ago. I found them both to be of excellent quality and most informative. They introduced me to many new variables. Are there any plans to bring these items back into publication? What are the key issues for beginning this series again? A lack of contributive authors? I believe that many individuals would contribute if called upon to do so. "CCD Views" and "Eyepiece Views" would both be great additions to the AAVSO Quarterly Newsletter. Kevin - PKV
I published CCD Views so can report on it. It was stopped basically due to lack of time. I thoroughly enjoyed putting it together, but it did take time. Even though about 1/3-1/2 of the articles were contributed, it usually takes more time to process contributed articles than writing them yourself. That involves coming up with topics, inviting people to contribute, reminding them (often multiple times), editing it, sending proofs for final approval, etc. So it's not really a time saver. Also, at the time, we felt CCD Views had pretty much covered all of the low hanging fruit of topics. The things that we needed to move into, such as transformation coefficients, required more explanation that we were able to deliver via CCD Views. I'll leave current staff to comment on feasibility of bringing it back.
It would be great to get all the back issues online, and doing so is not a big job (there are not a lot of issues, nor a lot of formatting per issue to do).
In the meantime, back issues can be had from the Way Back Machine, for example:
http://web.archive.org/web/20031227173652/http://www.aavso.org/publicat…
using the snapshot from late 2003 (just change the "317" to whatever issue you want). Still, it would be nice to have them all together on the new AAVSO site.
We're going to be adding *some* of the back issues, but not all of them. The majority of back issues that haven't been put on the new site are single-article issues that initiate short-term observing campaigns, requesting observations at a specific time for a specific purpose. A few issues (I believe four of them) have novel content related to CCD observing techniques, and we'll put them back. I've asked staff to tend to this, and they'll tend to it as time permits.
Kevin,
Both CCD Views and Eyepiece Views existed when there wasn't a straightforward distribution method for the content they presented, but there is and has been an open venue for that for years -- the Newsletter. The only difference is that any articles that would've been published under the banner of CCD Views or Eyepiece Views are now just a part of the Newsletter. Eyepiece Views was explicitly a part of the Newsletter from 2008 to 2010. Since then the Newsletter has carried similar articles -- they just don't have the "Eyepiece Views" brand. As Aaron pointed out, production of these publications is time consuming, and we try to get content for the Newsletter regardless of whether it appeals to visual or CCD observers. The idea of having regular features that appeal to visual observers and CCD observers individually is fine with me, but to be honest I like having articles about "Observing", period.
If you think the Newsletter has been too light on content for visual or CCD observing, you're welcome to remedy that! I invite you and anyone else that's interested in writing for the Newsletter to submit articles for consideration. If you'd like to write an article about visual observing, ccd observing, or whatever, great! As long as it reads well and would appeal to the general Membership, the Newsletter is open to articles from any Member about any AAVSO-related topic you wish.
Matt