American Association Of Variable Star Observers

The American Association of Variable Star Observers (AAVSO) is an international nonprofit organization, founded in 1911, focused on coordinating, analyzing, publishing, and archiving variable star observations made largely by amateur astronomers. The AAVSO creates records that establish light curves depicting the variation in brightness of a star over time, and makes them available to professional astronomers, researchers, and educators.

Since professional astronomers do not have the time or the resources to monitor every variable star, astronomy is one of the few sciences where amateurs can make genuine contributions to scientific research. During 2011, the 100th year of the AAVSO's existence, the 20-millionth variable star observation was received into the database. The AAVSO International Database (AID) stores over 35 million observations as of 2019. The organization receives nearly 1,000,000 observations annually from around 2,000 professional and amateur observers and is quoted regularly in scientific journals.

The AAVSO is also very active in education and public outreach. They routinely hold training workshops for citizen science and publish papers with amateurs as coauthors. In the 1990s, the AAVSO developed the Hands-On Astrophysics curriculum, now known as Variable Star Astronomy (with support from the National Science Foundation (NSF)). In 2009, the AAVSO was awarded a three-year $800,000 grant from the NSF to run Citizen Sky, a pro-am collaboration project examining the 2009-2011 eclipse of the star epsilon Aurigae.

Starting on September 16, 2022, the Executive Director of the AAVSO is Brian Kloppenborg. Before him, Kathy Spirer was the Acting Executive Director for nine months, after Styliani ("Stella") Kafka -who was in charge between February 2015 and the end of 2021- resigned. She had taken over from Arne Henden. The previous director of the AAVSO for many decades was Janet Mattei, who died in March 2004 of leukemia.

The AAVSO headquarters were originally located at the residence of its founder William T. Olcott in Norwich, Connecticut. After AAVSO's incorporation in 1918 it de facto moved to Harvard College Observatory, which later officially provided an office as the AAVSO headquarters (1931–1953). After then it moved around Cambridge before purchasing their first building in 1985 - The Clinton B. Ford Astronomical Data and Research Center. In 2007, the AAVSO purchased and moved into the recently vacated premises of ''Sky & Telescope'' magazine.

Minor Planet (8900) ''AAVSO'' is named after the organization.

Current and former members

;Recorders and Directors

;Presidents

;Other members
The AAVSO currently has over 2,000 members and observers, with approximately half of them from outside the United States. This list only consists of those with Wikipedia pages.

Publications

* ''AAVSO Alert Notice''.

''Journal of the American Association of Variable Star Observers'' (JAAVSO)

* ''AAVSO Circular'' was published from 1970 until 2000 and edited by John E. Bortle.

See also

* List of astronomical societies

References

External links

AAVSO websiteThe International Variable Star Index
(VSX)
History of the AAVSO
Space.com, June 28, 2000

article in the January 2007 issue of ''Sky & Telescope'' magazine
Red Hot News… Possible Nova in Sagittarius!
''Universe Today'', August 9, 2009

100 Years of Citizen Science
(1 December 2010)

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Harvard University
Amateur astronomy organizations
Astronomy organizations
Variable stars
1911 establishments in the United States
Scientific organizations established in 1911