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bkloppenborg

Citizen Sky is now officially permanent part of the AAVSO. In the coming weeks we will be moving additional content to the AAVSO site and freezing this site as an archive of the 1st three years of the project. Please visit the new landing page for future updates.

DSLR Team Chat: 2012 Feb 11

The DSLR team is almost done with their contribution to the JAAVSO special issue on epsilon Aurigae and Citizen Sky.  For others interested in submitting a paper to JAAVSO, the submission deadline in March 1.

The DSLR team discussed a few last remaining issues and some copyediting done to our contribution.  The chat transcript can be accessed here.  We will have one final chat next week on Saturday, Feb. 18 at 18:00 UTC (1:00 PM US Eastern).

 

Posted by bkloppenborg on February 11, 2012 - 8:53pm

DSLR Team Chat Posted: 2012 Feb 04

Greetings,

The DSLR Team completed another chat session today concerning their upcoming JAAVSO publication.  This session was extra long (nearly 3 hours).  The chat transcript can be found here.  We will be hosting our next chat session next Saturday, Feb. 11 at 18:00 UTC (1:00 PM Eastern US).

The team's submission to JAAVSO is nearly complete!
Brian

Posted by bkloppenborg on February 4, 2012 - 5:47pm

DSLR Team Chat: Completed, Transcript Here

Greetings Everyone,

The DSLR Documentation and Reduction team will host a team meeting in the AAVSO chatroom to discuss the final elements of our publication in JAAVSO on Saturday, Jan 28 at 19:00 UTC (2:00 PM Eastern).

The transcript can be found here.

The chat room can be accessed by pointing your browser here. Details about how to use dedicated chat clients (highly recommended) are here.

Brian
 

Posted by bkloppenborg on January 27, 2012 - 12:18pm

Upcoming S&T Article, Interview with Dr. Bob

In a soon-to-print edition of Sky & Telescope there will be a feature article discussing epsilon Auriage and the contributions from amateur astronomers.  Before that comes out in press there are two podcast interviews between Bob Naeye from S&T and Dr. Bob which can be found in the link below:

http://www.skyandtelescope.com/skytel/beyondthepage/Robert-Stencel-on-Epsilon-Aurigae-137116093.html

 

Posted by bkloppenborg on January 12, 2012 - 12:45pm

DSLR Team Chat: Transcript posted

Greetings Everyone,

The DSLR Documentation and Reduction team will host a team meeting in the AAVSO chatroom to discuss our contribution to the upcoming JAAVSO special issue on Thursday, December 22 (due to a power outage and subsequent damage at AAVSO it has been rescheduled to) Wednesday, December 28 at 2:00 PM Eastern (19:00 UTC)Read more

Status: Completed, (log 2011-12-26-DSLRTeamChat.pdf)
Saturday, Dec 26 at 19:00 - 20:00 UTC (Brian, Heinz, MIke and Roger in attendence)
Sat. Dec. 17 at 6:30 - 7:30 AM Eastern
 
Summary:

Posted by bkloppenborg on December 19, 2011 - 10:15pm

Measuring a Star's brightness

It is very rare that I do a repost of a blog, but this time I had to make an exception.  Each day our friends over at Astrobites summarize a paper on ArXiv (or produce some other, similarly interesting blog post) written at an undergraduate readership level.  Yesterday's post discussed how brightness from stars (i.e. photometry) is actually measured:

http://astrobites.com/2011/12/15/how-do-astronomers-measure-the-brightness-of-something/

It goes into some discussion of spectral types and filters so it's well worth a read if you have some time to spare.


Posted by bkloppenborg on December 16, 2011 - 5:17pm

Mira Team Chats: This Saturday and Sunday

The Mira Fourier Coefficient Team has scheduled two chat sessions to discuss the "to do" items for the upcoming JAAVSO journal article.  The team is truely international so scheduling the chat resulted in early morning times in the US.  The two chats will be held at:Read more

Chat 1:

Status: Completed, (log 2011-12-17-MiraTeamChat.pdf)
Saturday, Dec 17 at 11:30 - 12:30 UTC (Brian, Heinz, Jim, and David in attendance)
Sat. Dec. 17 at 6:30 - 7:30 AM Eastern
 
Summary:

Posted by bkloppenborg on December 16, 2011 - 12:04pm

Team Updates, CHARA Run, and Proposals and Papers

It has been a while since I last provided a public update on the teams in which I am involved and even longer since I discuss what I've been up to, so in the next few paragraphs I'll summarize these activities. If you are looking for a team, the MIRA and eps Aur History teams I discuss below can always use more members as they have both have large projects on which assistance will be greatly appreicated.

 

Teams

 

The DSLR Documentation and Reduction TeamRead more

Posted by bkloppenborg on October 21, 2011 - 1:21pm

Mira Team Chat: Transcript Posted

Members from the MIRA Fourier coefficient team held an online chat session to discuss what needed to be done for the upcoming JAAVSO publication as well as some useful features to be implemented in VStar.  The chat transcript is attached to this post.  

The group established a timeline:
2011-xx-xx: Generate a list of ~400 MIRAs (completed)
2011-xx-xx: Pre-process these MIRAs to remove discrepant data points between JD 2440000 - 24550000 (deadline needs to be set)
2011-09-23 (or before): Brian provides the team with 10-20 sample MIRAs with known properties (periods, changes in periods, etc.) for testing/training.
2011-10-15: Have analysis of the sample MIRA data complete and report back to the team.
2011-11-15: Abstract and extended outline complete.
2012-01-15: First rough draft of JAAVSO publication complete
2012-03-01: JAAVSO publication submitted.

More details and an updated timeline can be found on the team timetable page (team membership may be required to view this page).

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Read more

Posted by bkloppenborg on September 15, 2011 - 10:55am

Zeta Aurigae Primary Eclipse Observing Campaign

Now that the epsilon Auriage eclipse has passed, several people have been asking me and Dr. Bob "what's next?"  For me I'll spend this academic year finishing up my dissertation, helping finish team publications, and looking for my first postdoc.  Dr. Stencel, on the other hand, has an intrest in several other systems one of which is Zeta Auriage.

Back in 2009 Jeffrey Hopkins and CSky teamed up for a mini observing campaign of the secondary eclipse of Zeta Auriage, one of the other stars in the asterisim known as "the kids" in Auriage.  Now three years later the primary eclipse of this star system has arrived and we are yet again in need of your assistance to catch the eclipse.Read more

Posted by bkloppenborg on September 5, 2011 - 12:33am

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