Vermont Academy Variable Star Wildcats (VAVSW)

We will be taking part in the monitoring campaign of Epsilon Aur as a long term project for this year's astronomy class. We hope to take as much data as possible, on a weekly to semi-weekly timescale, weather permitting. This project will provide the framework for learning: how to use a telescope, how to make observations, how brightness of stars is measured, how the sky changes with the seasons, all sorts of stuff about variable stars and other stars, how to analyze variability, and so on. I am hoping this project will be a fantastic and real-life introduction to what astronomers and scientists in general do when they perform research.