AAVSO: Profesyonel ve Amatör Astronomlar Arasındaki Köprü

Abstract

The American Association of Variable Star Observers (AAVSO) is a worldwide, nonprofit, scientific and aducational ornganization of amateur and Professional astronomers who are interested in variable stars. Its purpose is to coordinate, collect, evalute, analyze, publish, and archive variable star observations made largely by amateur astronomers, and to make these observations available to professional astronomers, researchers, and educators. The AAVSO was founded in 1911 at Harvard College Observatory to coordinate variable star observations madde largely by amateur astronomers. In 1954, the AAVSO became an independent, private recearch organization. Today with members in more than 40 countries, over 10 million observations to date, and headquarters in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA, it is the world’s largest association of variable star observers in existence. Membership in the AAVSO is open to anyone interested in variable stars and in contributing to the support of valuable research. Since Professional astronomers have neither the time nor the telescopes needed to gather data on the brightness changes of thousands of variables, amateurs have been making a real and useful contribution to science by observing variable stars and submitting their observations to the AAVSO International Database. Observations of most types of variable stars are coordinated and publised by the Director and the technical staff at AAVSO headquarters. Observing for certain types of stars is coordinated outside of AAVSO headquarters, under the authority of the AAVSO director.