[vsnet-chat 295] Re: New variable stars, etc.

[Taichi Kato <tkato@kusastro.kyoto-u.ac.jp>]

Reply to [vsnet-chat 267]

Thanks Tonny, and sorry for my late response.

>>I remember I was
>>once consulted by T. Vanmunster on future media of publication or circulation
>>of excellent works of VVS Belgium -- probably he could also comment on
>>his motivation.
>
>It was not me, but Paul Van Cauteren (former president of the Belgian
>Variable Star Section), who once consulted Taichi Kato -and others- on
>future media for circulating variable star information. This happened
>at a moment when VSNET didn't exist yet, and when Internet wasn't as
>widespread as it is nowadays.  Paul's suggestion was to start a monthly (?)
>journal on CV's, aimed at discussing interesting outburst discoveries,
>presenting light curves, drawing first conclusions from CCD photometry data,
>etc. At the moment this idea was launched, we were discussing electronic
>means for circulating it. A few months later VSNET arrived, and we thought 
>this would cover most of our original objectives, so we gave up the entire
>idea.

    Sorry for my incorrect memory, but I am now fortunate to find the
original log of this correpondence, which was done in March 1994.
It seems to me there were at least two main reasons for their initiating
this proposal: one was the lack of suitable (quickly) circulating media
of important phenomena and amateur works, the very topic which has been
discussed; the other was the inability of existing variable star organizations
to match the requests from observers (e.g. the ways observers wish their
observations be archived, used, referred to, and shared).  The first problem
now seems to be partly solved by the present easy accesibility to electronic
publishing, but knowing there were already VARSTARS and Nova Net e-mail
exploders at the time of the proposal by Van Cauteren's group, it now looks
to me the second point was more important, whose solution should still
eagerly be sought.

Regards,
Taichi Kato

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