"An observation in a drawer is no observation at all." I've lost the reference to who said that, but it is worth repeating. Your observations must be put in to the public record to be useful.
For times of minima, this means publication in a journal article somewhere. The Journal of the AAVSO is one option. Gerry Samolyk, one of the co-leaders of the EB Section, accepts ToMs from observers and publishes them in omnibus papers in the JAAVSO, typically one or two times per year. If you have many ToMs, you are free to publish them in a paper yourself, though if you are just publishing ToMs, you should have an amount of data similar to one of Gerry's papers to make good use of the time of the editor, referrees, and others involved with preparing the journal. If you have collected a great deal of information about a star, and perhaps modelled it, you may wish to publish a paper about that star alone. There are other venues in addition to the JAAVSO, e.g. OEJV, Peremennye Zvezdy, IBVS, etc. You will find that the burden of running a journal has caused most of these groups to impose "hurdles" regarding the minimum volume of information or depth of analysis that they are willing to publish.
If you wish to have your ToM published in one of the regular papers prepared by Gerry Samolyk, here are the steps:
- submit the photometry from your time-series to the AID (AAVSO International Database), just like any other variable star photometry
- determine the time of minimum
- send a copy of the photometry you uploaded to the AID, and the ToM to Gerry Samolyk by email. Make contact with him via aavsoeblegacy@gmail.com .
- optionally, and with Gerry's concurrence, you might submit your CCD or DSLR time-series photometry to him, and he will determine the ToM for you
- the final step will be Gerry's: he will publish the ToM in an upcoming paper, listing you as the observer
Next: some thoughts about the future of EB observing.