At our last meeting in March we had an open discussion on acquiring, processing, and analyzing low resolution spectra. A lot of questions were raised and I took the action to address them at our next meeting. Since the April meeting was cancelled due to the eclipse, the upcoming meeting on 8 May is the one where many of your questions hopefully will be answered.
One of our section members, Anthony Harding, has agreed to share his knowledge in processing low resolution spectra with the group by giving a presentation titled "Slitless Stellar Spectroscopy with an SA100". Anthony will demsonstrate his techniques in obtaining, processing, and analyzing stellar spectra which he says are easy to learn and usefull for those engaged in slitless spectroscopy. He will show how he has employed his techniques to produce the "Harding Spectral Library" which is available on the rspec-astro web site. I have previewed his presentation and it's one you don't want to miss!
I have a plan to follow-up in the June meeting on a related topic and will update the group when I have it finalized. After the June meeting I intend to spend a few meetings covering topics related to medium and high resolution spectroscopy. If you are engaged in either of these and wish to give a presentation, please let me know.
Also share with me any of your ideas or suggestions for future meetings, as the goal of these meetings is to improve our knowledge and skills in our shared passion for astronomical spectroscopy, and I want to make sure your expectations are being met.
Ragards,
Scott
Hello Scott,
I may have missed it, but will there be an announcement about time and link to join?
Bill Goff
Navigate to the Spectroscopy Observing Section. Scroll down to Monthly Meetings and click on the link for the meeting agenda (includes the Zoom link).
Meeting time is Wed, May 8 at 7:00 p.m. EDT (23:00 UTC).
Will have to miss this, its our Astronomy Meeting night. Its too bad that we cannot have this recorded, as I am very interested in this, since this is the equipment I have.
Kim Hay
HKY
Hello,
I find it a shame that the Spectroscopy Section Meeting does not get recorded. With so many encounters via the web being recorded, wouldn't it be nonsense that this cannot be recorded?
Unjustifiable, even if some justifications may be presented by its organizers.
Ari
Please feel free to bring your concern to the AAVSO leadership.
I intend to post a copy of the presentation on the section page after the meeting. Not the same as a recorded presentation, but you will be able to roll through the slide deck and hopefully get a good idea of the information presented.
Scott
Scott,
Thank you for posting a copy of the presentation after the meeting. This is helpful to those of us who are quite interested in spectroscopy, but who are unable to participate live in the section meetings due to other responsibilities (Wednesdays at 4pm Pacific Time are impossible for me to attend, and will be for the forseeable future). Rather than appealing to the AAVSO leadership, as you suggest above, I am appealing to you to please consider the following request.
After starting the Zoom meeting on Wednesday, consider clicking on "More" and selecting "Record on this computer" to create a recording of the meeting, and then consult with Lauren Herrington, who runs the AAVSO webinar series, about how to post that recording to the Spectroscopy section page, as she was able to do with the very useful webinar that you and Bob Buchheim presented on March 9th (https://www.aavso.org/webinars).
Providing such a recording will not only benefit those of us in North America who are interested is getting better at spectroscopy, but whose schedule is not completely under their control, it will also benefit AAVSO members who live in Europe, for whom after midnight meetings are not very convenient, as well as elsewhere on the Earth, and will possibly help to build more interest in the AAVSO Spectroscopy Section globally.
Best Regards,
David
David, I agree with everything you said and share your desire to have a recording of the meetings available. As to your suggestion that I record the meeting and coordinate with Lauren afterward, the issue is that recording zoom meetings is a capability reserved for AAVSO staff members. Since I am not not AAVSO staff but only an unpaid volunteer, I do not have the capability to record the meeting, so its not just a simple matter of me hitting the record button as you suggested. I will bring this issue up yet again at an this month's meeting of the section leaders given the amount of interest in recording these meetings.
Scott
Received this reply to a post I made here, but looks like it may have been removed, not sure what happened. However, if there is consensus, Scott may be given 'record' privileges. This is what Brian said in his response:
Hi Rod,
I appreciate you taking the time to write us and let us know that you would prefer for the section meetings to be recorded and posted online. I thought it prudent to write back so that you understand that our decision was not arbitrary, but instead the preference of the majority of our members.
When we first began hosting section-specific webinars about a year ago, we offered to record the meetings and post them online. As you point out below, recording the meetings is indeed trivial. However, the participants in the early meetings considered our offer and voted it down almost unanimously. They indicated that they didn’t feel comfortable asking questions in a meeting that could immortalize their naivety. Because of this, AAVSO didn’t include $3,200 in our budget to provide our Section Leaders with Zoom Business accounts. Since then, the Exoplanet Section has started recording the presentation portion of their meeting and posting it online, but they are using a separate Zoom Pro account for that purpose.
If the Sections change their mind regarding recordings, I’m happy to support their decision; however, I don’t have the budget to scale this out across all sections this year.
Kind Regards,
Dr. Brian Kloppenborg
Executive Director, AAVSO
Phone: 617-354-0484 x107
Email: bkloppenborg@aavso.org
Hello everyone,
Reading the thread of posts, the arguments on both sides seem valid and the possibility of being able to consult these meetings afterwards is also interesting.
Can we consider recording in-house (i.e. in a personal way with software like OBS Studio), then making it available later on the AAVSO YouTube site?
I am offering myself as a volunteer for this meeting on May 8, as long as we remain within the normal temporary framework.
JBD
Greetings,
I understand that there is a strong desire to record the meetings and post them online; however, we must also recognize that the participants were given this option at the start and they explicitly voted it down. To re-iterate, is no technical issue at play here: not only can our videoconferencing solution record the meeting, it can also obtain consent from those attending the meeting.
If this is truly a significant issue, I suggest Scott take it to the Section Leaders at the next meeting so it can be reconsidered.
Brian Kloppenborg
Executive Director, AAVSO