Southern Gems Team Update

Dear Southern Gem Teammates, Now that 2010 is coming to a close, I would like to take this opportunity to tell all of you how proud I am of this awesome team and our accomplishments. We have published a great tutorial that can be used by people in the Southern Hemisphere and we have forged friendships here too. For me, it is a wonderful experience working with all of you. At this point, Julio and Sebastian are working on a translation of the tutorial in Spanish, and Marcelo Souza and Jonatas are translating it into Portuguese. These documents will make it much easier for people in Central and South America to participate in variable star observing. We will publish those two documents soon. All of you can be a part of this next step, using the tutorial and evaluating it. We want to be sure that the stars we have chosen work for most people and that the directions to do the observing and recording are clear to everyone. Having people actually use the tutorial will give us an idea whether we need to revise or edit further. I hope that all of you will begin using the tutorial soon and give the team feedback. Also, you can spread the word to your colleagues and others interested in observing. Many of you on this team have connections to organizations that have members likely to benefit from having this tutorial. I hope that you will feel free to publicize it and that you will let the team know if a group is using it. Let's keep each other informed so we know that our work is making its mark out there. Any and all of you should feel free to add a post, when you have sent the tutorial to a group or get feedback. On January 4th at 4:00 PM ET time (New York time, I guess) there will be an open chat at Citizen Sky about possible new projects. I hope that many of you might be able to attend this chat and join in with suggestions for a new project for our team. Be thinking about this, and if you won't be able to make it to the chat, send me an email with suggestions... starladyjoan@yahoo.com I will make sure your suggestions are heard. I hope that this awesome team will continue to do great things, do real work for science, and continue to build our friendships. I would like to welcome 3 new members to our team: Jaime Garcia is from Rama Calda, Mendoza, Argentina. He is president of AAVSO and has lots of experience in astronomy. Diane Hughes is from Brisbane, Australia. And Flavio Orsini is from Belo Horizonte, Brazil. I extend a warm welcome to all three of you from me and on behalf of my team. Please feel free to put up a post on our team telling a little about yourself, so we can get to know you better. I look forward to working with all of you again in 2011. Thank you all for your hard work, your patience, and your enthusiasm and support. Southern Gems is the BEST!Happy New Year!Joan