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International Year of Astronomy | American Association of Variable Star Observers (AAVSO)
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International Year of Astronomy | American Association of Variable Star Observers (AAVSO)
A timeline format would be good, although it might get boring to the reader. Perhaps we could identify the people, their time(s) of contribution, and what they did? Some other logical grouping might become more evident then.
Another twist on the timeline might be looking at technology advances/wavelengths utilized at each new eclipse period. There are a lot of people connected with eps Aur, are there any unsung significant folks we can highlight? Alice
Struve, Strombgren and Kuiper are three names that quickly come to mind.
Brian, I agree. If the investigation of eA is viewed as a snapshot of astronomy methods, it seems that the people who developed these methods and the value of the methods in understanding of eA would be naturally integrated. Focusing on the methods, rather than the people, may also give some clear structure and limits to the paper. I also think we need a target deadline and publication venue. I think for the Citizen Sky grant purposes it is best to publish something sooner than later. Poster at AAS 2012 Austin is one potential venue. Susan
All, How do you want to go about tacking this? One idea is to create an outline and then allocate different sections to different people. The final product would need to be edited by all. Susan
Paraphrasing Otto Struve a little here, the history of epsilon Aurigae is basically the history of astrophysics. There are really several different ways to go with this. We could go through each eclipse and talk about the new technologies applied to the problem and see what new information these approached provided (and how it helped solve things). For example: the evolution of photometry went from visual-only observations (with no-to-little attention on color) to highly-defined photometric filters. The last eclipse was the first to have observations in several filters (U,B,V,J,H,K,L,L',M, etc.) whereas all prior eclipses were just something near V-band. Did the improvement in accuracy help define things further, or was the precision largely ignored? A different option would be to follow the contributions of different people (particularly the big names). This could just summarize how they related, cooperated, and exchanged ideas. This will require some real sleuthing, but could turn out to be interesting. Any other ideas? Brian
I, too, like the aspect of epi Aur as a "View Master" for astrophysics. "Click" another eclipse another look at the advancement in observation, "click" and look how things have changed. I started down that path with the paper Ipassed along but there is much more to find and we could go into greater detail. ..more later, I"m on my way to Yosemite and don't have much internet time. Alice
Brian, Each direction you suggested has a benefit. I think the first suggestion would be something that could be used in any astronomy course because it would highlight the benefits of the technological developments in astronomy. I have never seen such anything written on any astronomical object/phenomenon with this perspective -- have you? The second direction provides a sequence of people that preceded the Citizen Sky participants. My guess is that this would be less applicable to astronomy educators, but of interest to the CS crew. I am also thinking that the exchange of ideas probably would require access to primary source documents -- letters -- that may or may not have been archived somewhere in Europe and US. Susan