A T CrB update, new hire, and more news from the AAVSO. By Brian Kloppenborg

Greetings AAVSO Members, Observers, and Supporters,

As we enter the final quarter of 2024, I’m pleased to provide you with an update on the AAVSO’s activities, achievements, and challenges from the third quarter. These months have been eventful, marked by significant milestones and some difficult news. I look forward to sharing these highlights as well as our vision for the future of our organization.

No, it didn’t erupt yet. A quick update on T CrB

Foremost, I must answer the question that everyone has been asking me as of late: No, T CrB hasn’t erupted yet. When Brad, Elizabeth, and I announced the pre-eruption dip in June 2023 / ATEL 16107, we estimated that the eruption would occur around 2024.4±0.3 (1-sigma bound of 2024 August 12). As explained by Ulisse Munari in ATEL 16404 the accretion disk exhibited a deep photometric minimum around that time, but has since rebounded. Suffice it to say, our model was overly simplistic. Fortunately, events like this allow us to prepare for the future. Please take some time to consider what you should do during the eruption because T CrB is going to be much more difficult to observe than most people think.

Staffing Updates

In July 2024, Whitney Armentor joined the AAVSO as Development Director. With over fifteen years of experience in nonprofit fundraising, she brings a proven track record in developing effective fundraising strategies, donor-centered marketing, and event planning. Whitney holds a degree from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette and has served on the board of the Association of Fundraising Professionals' New Orleans chapter. Her position was made possible by the Board in September 2022 through proceeds from the sale of AAVSO's headquarters building.

Some unfortunate news

The third quarter also came with some very unfortunate news. 

We learned that former AAVSO staff member Richard “Doc” Kinnie passed away on September 25, 2024. As many of you know, Doc started at AAVSO as a volunteer who eventually became a staff member. From 2005 - 2017 he served as our IT specialist. Doc was an exceptionally kind and enthusiastic individual who will be greatly missed.

We also learned that the Bridge Fire in southern California destroyed the Clinton B. Ford observatory. The observatory was dedicated in 1965. The logbooks capture its lively history and visitors. The AAVSO received possession of the observatory after Clint’s passing in 1992 and operated the facility until it was donated to the Los Angeles Astronomical Association in 2012. In a recent blog post commemorating the observatory, Bill Golf recounts his time with Clint at the observatory.

Conferences

In July, I attended the Astronomical League’s 2024 convention, ALCON, held in Overland Park, KS. It was good to meet many of you in person and converse about your latest scientific activities.

In August, Bert Pablo (AAVSO Staff Astronomer), Peter Bealo (Board Member), and Mark Munkacy (Board Member) presented several talks about variable stars and the AAVSO at Stellafane.

2024 Strategic Goals

Due to your generous support of our 2024 Annual Campaign, we’ve been able to make significant strides towards achieving our 2024 Strategic Goals. 

Under our technology goal, we replaced our custom forum software with a commercial solution. This new software has a very different user interface that is significantly faster and easier to use. Unfortunately, the custom nature of our old software made it too costly to migrate forum posts to the new system. As a result, we will archive the old forum content instead. More information about the new software and our transition plan can be found in Aru Bhoop’s recent blog post on this topic. 

In pursuit of our goal to make variable star astronomy more accessible to the public, we launched a Smart Telescope Working Group (STWG). In their initial meetings, the group realized that the typical user of a smart telescope expects a significantly more streamlined user experience than what our existing photometric pipelines would provide. Because of this, the working group is taking a very different approach to photometry that I find quite novel and very alluring. The group is also moving very quickly. To date, they’ve acquired sample data on standard fields from a variety of smart telescopes (Celestron Origin, ZWO SeeStar, Unistellar EVScope 2, DWARF Lab Dwarf II, and Vaonis Vespea), defined a new data exchange format, and put together a new data reduction pipeline. In doing so, they’ve also uncovered some unique issues faced by users of color cameras that I don’t believe have been discussed in the literature.

In Q4 we intend to completely replace the software that runs www.aavso.org. To complete this work, we will need to replace our photometric data upload tool (WebObs), create a new data search tool, and migrate a subset of the 30,000 pages on aavso.org to the new software. Any content we don’t migrate will be archived in case it needs to be retrieved.

From the Board

In his 2023 President’s Report, Richard Berry noted that 2024 was going to be a pivotal year in the future of AAVSO. He mentioned that I challenged the Board to look toward the future, acknowledge that our role in astronomy is changing, and imagine what AAVSO could become. 

Over the last year, the Board and I have devoted countless hours towards program reviews and strategic planning. We have sought input from professional astronomers, the staff, our members, and many of the people who participate in our activities. I am proud to report that our efforts are complete.

At its October 7, 2024 meeting, the Board approved a new five-year strategic plan that will result in a significant number of forward-looking changes within the AAVSO. Richard and I will provide a comprehensive discussion of these items in November at the AAVSO’s 113th Annual Meeting. However, in the meantime, I’d like to provide you with a preview of what is to come.

A New Vision Statement

A vision statement captures an organization’s long-term aspirations and the impact it attempts to achieve in the future. It provides the organization and its leaders with inspiration, direction, and purpose by defining what success looks like at some point in the future.

Starting in 2025, the vision of the AAVSO will be as follows:

“We want AAVSO to become the leading platform where people of all ages and backgrounds learn about and participate in scientific astronomy.”

This vision statement allows AAVSO to expand its programs and services while also emphasizing the vital role that education plays in enabling the public to contribute to science. It also allows us to spotlight and develop the other important activities that AAVSO performs beyond variable star science: we provide stellar photometry, stellar spectroscopy, exoplanet photometry, and sunspot counts to the broader scientific community. These activities align with the needs of professional astronomers and allow AAVSO to produce data that complement, rather than compete with, data products coming from sky surveys.

A New Mission Statement

A mission statement defines an organization's core purpose and the action it takes to achieve its goals. It outlines what the organization does, who it serves, and how it delivers value, providing a clear focus for day-to-day operations and decision making.

As of 2025, the mission of the AAVSO will become:

“We provide amateur astronomers and students the opportunity to make real and direct contributions to astronomy. In programs they complete at their own pace, we teach them how to make observations and how to analyze astronomical data, and we offer them the opportunity to participate in observing campaigns designed to produce peer-reviewed published papers.”

Upon first glance, this mission statement appears quite similar to AAVSO’s current activities; however, its emphasis on producing scientific results will enable us to concentrate our time and energy on higher impact endeavors.

And New Strategic Goals

Strategic goals serve as a roadmap for an organization. They provide clear, measurable objectives that align with its mission and vision. These goals prioritize our resources towards activities that we believe will enable us to achieve our vision. Additionally, they foster accountability among team members by clarifying expectations and guiding day-to-day operations. Ultimately, strategic goals help organizations navigate challenges and capitalize on opportunities, driving long-term success and growth.

AAVSO’s Strategic Goals for 2025–2029 will be:

• Pivot to featuring high-science-value programs. 
  • We will dedicate 20% of our Ph.D. staff member time to conducting science with amateur astronomers.
  • We will shift to project-driven observing and data analysis activities. These will be similar in nature to the Z CamPaign effort in 2010 and will be developed collaboratively with input from the staff and section leaders.
  • We will create a data analysis project for the masses focused on light curve modeling.
• Pivot to helping people become skilled observers.
  • We will hire a full-time educator in 2026.
  • We will develop new, asynchronous training programs hosted on a modern educational  platform. Some of these programs will be free and open to the public, some will be free only to members, while others will be paid classes.
  • We will provide additional feedback and stronger data validation methods to our observers. This will start with an effort focused on AVSpec in 2025.
• Cultivate a diverse membership.
  • We will create and administer new annual scholarship or grant programs available to amateur astronomers, teachers, and students.
  • We will highlight AAVSO’s inherent diversity by featuring our participants in monthly blog posts or feature stories.
  • We will strive to achieve greater gender diversity by actively recruiting women to serve in leadership positions within the organization.
  • We will strive to achieve greater age diversity by creating new programs involving teachers and students.
• Assert our place in the Astronomical Community.
  • We will create a new application to track our scientific impact and identify prospective collaborators.
  • We will actively pursue collaborations with specific organizations and professional researchers.
  • We will create a new outreach program focused on engaging astronomy clubs, star parties, and similar events where amateur astronomers congregate.
  • We will create programs and marketing efforts that encourage astrophotographers and smart telescope owners to contribute their data to AAVSO.
• Develop a strong technology base.
  • We will replace several of our legacy applications with modern web-based applications. This will include VSX, VSD, VSP, SeqPlot, and SunEntry.
  • We will modify our existing applications to capture usage statistics so we can better understand their importance to the organization.
  • We will create an API for our core services.

Both the Board and I are very excited about the new strategic plan and the future it will bring to the organization. We look forward to discussing these items with you at the 113th Annual Meeting. 

Kind regards,

Dr. Brian Kloppenborg
Executive Director
American Association of Variable Star Observers
Phone: 617-354-0484 x107
Email: bkloppenborg@aavso.org