1. AAVSO Members by Type (as of September 30, 2007) Total Members: 1,277 *D. Hoffleit and F. Bateson were the last Honorary Members on the rolls.

2. April 1, 2007 - September 30, 2007 Annual: 35 Sustaining: 1 ======================= Members from US: 27 Members from abroad: 9 (from 6 countries) ======================= New Members - Fall: 55 New Members - Spring: 36 Total New Members FY 2006/2007: 91 New Member Summary

3. AAVSO Members by Country in 47 Countries 1,277 Total ARGENTINA AUSTRALIA AUSTRIA BELGIUM BRAZIL BANGLEDESH BULGARIA CANADA CAYMAN ISLANDS/BWI CHILE CHINA DENMARK EGYPT ENGLAND FINLAND FRANCE GERMANY GREECE HONG KONG HUNGARY INDIA IRELAND ISRAEL ITALY JAPAN MALTA MEXICO NETHERLANDS NEW ZEALAND NORWAY OMAN POLAND PORTUGAL ROMANIA RUSSIA SCOTLAND SOUTH AFRICA SOUTH KOREA SPAIN SRI LANKA SWEDEN SWITZERLAND TAIWAN TURKEY UKRAINE UNITED ARAB EMIRATES UNITED STATES

5. In Memoriam Members, Observers, Colleagues, and Friends of the AAVSO In Memoriam Members, Observers, Colleagues, and Friends of the AAVSO Ralph Geschwind Massillion, OH A dedicated AAVSO observer and member since the late 1960s, Ralph was also a founding member the Wilderness Center Astronomy Club in Ohio. His love of astronomy and willingness to mentor helped to encourage many new VSOers. Manuel Fojo Los Osos, CA A devoted AAVSO member since 1978, Manuel supported astronomy outreach efforts, including the College of San Mateos Reach for the Stars Program, in his home state of California.

6. In Memoriam Members, Observers, Colleagues, and Friends of the AAVSO October 2006 - April 2007 Frank Bateson - Tauranga, New Zealand Jacques Fontalba - Les Rives, France Martha Hazen - Hingham, MA Dorrit Hoffleit - New Haven, CT Raymond Win Jones - Capetown, South Africa Bohdan Paczyński - Princeton, NJ Alan Shapley - Boulder, CO

8. Upcoming Meetings Spring 2008 UK (Henden) Fall 2008 MMO (Walker) Spring 2009 SAS (Henden) Fall 2009 Cambridge Spring 2010 Argentina (Garcia) Fall 2010 Cambridge Spring 2011 Cambridge/AAS/Centenary

9. Spring 2008: UK Roger Picard, BAA representative Magdalene College, Cambridge April 10-13, 2008 Rooms on-site are 100 pounds incl. board, single bed AAVSO and BAA together need to book at least 50 of the on-site rooms, otherwise penalty

10. Magdalene College - 1

11. Magdalene College - 2

12. Magdalene College - 3

13. Magdalene College - 4

14. Magdalene College - 5

15. Spring 2009: SAS Joint meeting with the Society for Astronomical Sciences Big Bear, CA May 20-21, 2009 RTMC follows that weekend (Memorial Day) Visit to the new Big Bear Lake solar observatory

16. SAS - 1

17. SAS - 2

18. SAS - 3

19. SAS - 4

21. Large Survey Involvement PanSTARRS - no progress LSST - waiting on Suzanne Jacoby; anticipated one E/PO person at HQ GoogleSky - Carol Christian and I are playing phone tag ASAS - working with Pojmanski to have mirror site at AAVSO

23. Rosebrugh Bequest David Rosebrugh was council member, secretary and president of AAVSO Left 1/3 of estate to AAVSO (residual beneficiary, wife) Amount bequested was $100K, placed in Endowment until final disposition Family has given ok for use in house conversion

24. Feibelman Bequest Walter Feibelman was GSFC scientist, long-time member of AAVSO until 1970s when resigned in protest to higher dues. Left 1.9% of estate to AAVSO ($38K) Potential use as seed money for visitors suite

26. Discussion of FY2007 Budget $1.1M for new building -> transferred into fixed assets and does not show in budget $100K for additional expenses (moving, lawyer fees, etc.) shows in budget, but considered as part of purchase price $435K from sale of 25 Birch returned to Endowment, so net is $765K. Permitted withdrawal is $774.5K (4.8%)

27. Pitney Bowes Three accounts: postage, machine lease, purchase power Place funds in purchase power. Then call and have downloaded into postage machine. Machine lease and purchase power used to be joint account. Somewhere around 2001, purchase power split out. Never got notice of this; never got statements. Suddenly in June 2007, after they got our address changed, we started getting statements that showed we were maxed out - $25K. If purchase power was overdrawn, then they extended credit and charged interest. Never got a statement. EOW working with PB to research the account and give us the back statements so we can trace the history. In meantime, we are paying interest. We may have to pay the entire balance - $25K hit on budget.

28. Tiedeman Auditor for many years Last year hired new agent, stuck him on our account. Charges were $17K instead of usual $10K Working with Henry to either reduce this, or ensure we dont have similar bill this year.

30. HQ Status Back wall repaired, all internal repairs and painting finished. New windows on 2nd story. To be done: exterior - replacement of siding, painting, landscaping. A couple of new windows. Working with architects to decide on style, get bids.

31. HQ - conference center Patched up for Fall meeting, will work ok. Ideal for a benefactor at the $100K level - redo kitchen, raise ceiling, install another bathroom atall, paint/finish, redo wiring, etc. Low priority until we get a benefactor.

32. HQ - residence Long discussion with city, but they have finally decided residential conversion is grandfathered and can be accomplished with building permit, and does not require new parking plan. Two areas to discuss: visitors suite, residence. Architects plan to remodel entire area 3 construction bids

33. Visitors Suite Approx 250 sq. ft.; includes bedroom, bathroom, microwave/refrigerator. Like motel room. Accessible through house and through HQ. Used for HQ visitors (membership, Watson, Kinne, Simonsen, etc.) at significant cost savings (Best Western = $160/night incl. taxes) Can ask for donations for membership use Cannot be cleanly decoupled from house conversion (commercial building permit otherwise)

34. Residence Approx 1400 sq. ft. plus finished basement; 2 bedroom, 1.5bath plus garage, deck Can use visitors suite as 3rd bedroom for guests Desired by Director (larger than existing condo, no overhead neighbors, closer to work, more updated) Potential future use (new Director, visitors quarters, summer students) No clean other use; should not be left vacant Logical fundraiser

35. Basement

36. First Floor

37. 2nd Floor

38. Bids John Connaughton, recommended by architect, high end. $338K S&H Construction. Next door. $259K Brian Weisman. Did 2001 remodel, back wall, 2nd floor windows. $160K

40. HQ Staffing 9 full-time staff (Henden, Davis, Menali, Templeton, Waagen, Searle, Saladyga, Malatesta) 1 part-time student (Price) 3 part-time employees (Ortiz, Kinne, L.Henden) 3 contract staff (Caton, Turner, Watson)

41. HQ Staffing - Price Admitted to PhD program at Tufts, Science Education Full-time during summer and breaks; 20hrs/week through school year. Needs to teach at least one semester, probably Spring 2008, will not be able to work then. Expects to take about 4 more years to complete degree Loss of full-time IT person impacts HQ. Aaron not expected to continue IT work once gets PhD. At same time, Aaron working hard to bring in grants to pay full-time IT person.

42. HQ Staffing - Kinne Richard (Doc) Kinne already doing IT work on his regular job. Hired 10hrs/week to do remote IT work for AAVSO. Watching system logs, writing Perl scripts for database checking. Helping out on web design. Helping when computers need rebooting, security patches, etc. Wants to work full-time, at which time he would move to Boston. Insufficient funds to hire full-time, but is needed.

43. HQ Staffing - Searle Only admin assistant - used to have three in office. Inherited entire workload. Being treated for medical condition. Loss of two months during summer and during end of fiscal year, critical times. I offloaded financial duties to Linda to meet fiscal deadlines.

44. HQ Staffing - L. Henden Temporary solution to Searle problem was to hire Linda part-time (10-15hrs/week) to do financial functions. Lots of experience and knows the association. Stepped in and is straightening out record-keeping, quickbooks, etc. Needed for end-of-year, dues. Not a good long-term solution (nepotism, financial control). However, will do until we have sufficient funding to hire new full-time person. Need to talk to auditor to find out what safeguards he wants.

45. HQ Staffing - future Need financial administrator. Can be multiplexed with other duties to share costs. Need full-time IT person, in-house. Temporary solutions are part-time people, since targeted, lower total salary and no benefits. Only stopgap measure. Permanent solution is to increase overhead rate on grants and/or bring in more funds.

47. Grants - FY2007 Validation grant, used $25K out of $78K AAS SRG (Eggen) $3K Swift JANET salaries spent ($14K) Szkody XMM not spent ($10K) Swift UVOT not spent ($10K) Something else $40K

48. Grants - FY2008 Validation grant had $52K left at end of FY2007 HST/Szkody $15K (includes $5K for campaign salaries) HST/Bond $9500 XMM $10K SWRI/MJUO $25K

49. Grants - failures NSF SS Cyg (1year; Price) NSF SRO/MJUO (Terrell/Henden) NSF cool stars (Templeton) NASA/Deep Impact EPO (Kadooka)

50. Grants - future F.A.R. $4K for two new filters NSF Nov15 SS Cyg, Price/Patterson 3yrs $300K NSF Nov15 SRO/MJUO Terrell/Henden 3yrs $100K NSF Dec15 Education (Science Olympiad real research) Price 3yrs $300K IYA2009 Several grants through AAS/Price $300K Mt. Cuba/Morgan $100K Dec1

52. Discussion of FY2008 Budget Budget includes salary for fundraiser and equivalent amount of fundraising income Pickering fund?? Aaron pays his own way! HOA purchase funds arrive (Donna Young) No funds allocated for building refurb Building utilities etc. less since 1 building Legal and accounting includes 2x audit 3 issues of journal to work on backlog No additional grants

54. Directors Report to Council Oct1,2006-Sep30,2007 Arne A. Henden Director arne@aavso.org

55. Amateur Publicity Timothy Ferris - Seeing in the Dark PBS special (he has been in contact with us since, GRB/NM Skies) John Bohannon (Science mag) Oksanen (GRB071010B) WGPAC reactivated First Chambliss Award Newspaper articles (Motta)

57. Annual Observation Totals

58. AAVSO Data Download Requests 2,760 from one student 8,401 requests

59. Variable Star Plotter Still in beta release, but getting better Contracted with Clockworks for initial program; Michael Koppleman (volunteer), Aaron Price, Chris Watson working on final version Works for all AAVSO stars, all VSX stars, coords compDB now loaded, so compstar labels for all AAVSO sequences compDB photometry loaded for 22K stars Remaining 10K stars to be loaded Jan1 Huge time savings for chart updates

60. VSP issues Biggest issue is admin tool for maintaining compDB (Watson) Jan1 update is for those comp stars more than 0.2mag in error - major impact on observers and for research. Still need sequence team for adding new sequences, and to go back and fix old sequences New field calibrations being performed at SRO Implementing Tycho2 for bright charts instead of NOMAD Investigating dot size issue

61. Variable Star Plotter Only 58,024 charts plotted

62. Variable Star Index Functioning nearly flawlessly, slowly being accepted by general community. Biggest issue is batch uploading of new catalogs Need refereed VSX paper Need publication path for new stars Need linking to Simbad, ADS

64. Internal: JavaLPV Written by Kate Davis, replaces the graph paper approach used by Elizabeth Waagen to generate the LPV Min/Max prediction bulletin Will get full test this year Need more mean light curves for remaining LPVs to be fully useful Eliminate entirely? Online tool?

65. MySQL AAVSO International Database Created by Aaron Price, working properly and fast All submissions and corrections are made to the relational database; ASCII text files are gone. JavaZAP (Sara Beck) is online Biggest existing problem is the beta test period (Aug- Sep 2006) resulted in numerous duplicate entries; slowly being cleaned out.

66. Validation JavaZAP working, so being heavily used by Kerri, Sara, Gamze (local and remote) All Level I stars now updated (1200); working on Level II (lower priority stars) Automated prevalidation catches vast majority of input errors; can be made smarter Still to do: CCD validation Takes a lot of staff time. Important? Supervalidation - charge for service (Sarty, Percy)

68. New data formats Current visual format too limited, especially with 10 character names. Based on old ASCII system Created new visual standard format Created new extended (CCD) format (solicited support by all major vendors), that handles different reduction methods - saves Kates time by only programming to the Standard formats Elimination of HD as primary key - now use AUID, obtained from VSX Can input data on any star

69. Web changes Using PayPal for all MC/Visa orders. Membership renewal streamlined; updates SOLO automatically Data format support Kate taking data structures courses, staying current Tons of busy work - homepage changes, added documentation (Mentor pages), eJAAVSO, etc.

70. Sonoita Research Observatory (SRO) Operated by John Gross; partners Dirk Terrell, Walt Cooney and AAVSO C14, Paramount, STL-1001E

71. FY2007 SRO Projects W Vir (Templeton/Henden paper) Z UMi (continuing light curve; Cooney) SS Cyg monitoring for Aaron (PASP paper) Novae (several Henden/Munari papers) Calibrations (Henden/LPV, Terrell/WUMa) AAVSO (Dillon, Wells, Sallman)

72. Real value of SRO is for long-term monitoring of many fields. Note near complete BVRI coverage (dropouts due to summer monsoon) of this circumpolar object

73. MJUO Agreement in place for 2/3 time on the MJUO 0.6m telescope for next 10 years Agreement in place with SWRI for $25K to fund refurbishment in exchange for 1/3 time on MJUO; so net to AAVSO is 1/3 time Mechanical modifications underway; finish in December - Foote to install motors then. NSF grant proposal for new camera, salary, etc. Dirk Terrell PI, Henden CoI

74. Mt. John University Observatory (MJUO)

75. Lowell/Morgan Lowell will donate the Morgan 24-inch telescope (used for planetary patrol work) to the AAVSO Who refurbishes? Foote says too large for his facility. Checking with Lowell. Where to site? Checking with Mt. Hopkins, NMT Will give some time to SWRI in exchange for Terrell effort in automating

76. Morgan Telescope

77. 0.6m, f/13.5, quality optics Also has f/77 secondary, separate top ring/motor RA gearing excellent Dec gearing needs work Excellent instrument capacity

78. FY2008 Projects Refurbishment, installation of MJUO and Morgan. Webpage for requests Resolution of Ford Observatory (Victor Valley) Update of compstar database, VSP, VSX Campaigns (eta Aur, IYA2009) Continued calibrations and VSD work HQ refurbishment Streamlining of accounting system (autopay) New store items