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Possibly just another reply here, but I went through a similar patch years ago and kept on changing my target list. I didn't dramatise it though, as it was all exciting to do. I refer to visual observations here. There is nothing wrong by concentrating on CVs only. Some observers (like you hinted in that direction) only go after the rare outbursters incl recurrent novae. They don't find much but if they do it is really important. In association with this I would like to point in another direction still. Why not selecting a small number of nearby galaxies with good SN producing characteristics. Perhaps you could go specifically after the type Ia SNe and include lenticular and elliptical galaxies on the list. Just monitor them like you would the CVs or just a bit less frequent, once or twice a week. The prize will be to watch beautiful structures in the universe under ever changing sky conditions, lots of (>99.99%) negative SN observations but then when you get lucky you might contribute to extreme science. Just a thought... Visual observing from reasonably dark places is very rewarding indeed... Regards, Berto Monard / MLF >>> "Mike Simonsen" <mikesimonsen@mindspring.com> 10/19/03 10:09PM >>> I really appreciate the serious consideration given to these questions by the many who have responded, both publicly and privately. I am at one of those points where you sit down and evaluate what you have been doing and what you think you'd like to do for the coming year. Probably why this has come to the surface. I really am looking for suggestions and advise. Steve's response really hit home. Fortunately, I came to this same conclusion not long ago and have made it a point to spend more quality time with my long suffering, but not unappreciated wife. When I joined AAVSO in 1999 it was much easier to decide what to observe. I just copied what my friends and mentors were doing and became a CV junkie. Part of the unwritten rules of this game are to do as many observations as possible as fast as you can so you can cover the most sky and the greatest number of stars in an evening. The number of outbursts detected is directly proportional to the number of observations made. After a while you learn which ones are the "significant or noteworthy outbursts" and which are the more run of the mill common occurrences. The unspoken competition to be the first to detect one of these "important" outbursts was plenty inspiration to keep me up all night searching the sky. Learning to star hop, identify and memorize the fields, selecting program stars from the literature and cobbling together charts and sequences for them all has taken several years. In the meantime, I have watched as many of the stars I thought were important or mysterious have given up some of their secrets and are now not as interesting to astronomers when they do occasionally go pop. It seems most are more interested in being the first to determine the type or period of these stars than in the long term monitoring of their behavior. Along the way I have made unexpected friends of some of these stars. There is no scientific or rational justification, I just like the little buggers. I wouldn't stop observing them now just because they have been forsaken by the professional astronomers. But I found myself becoming restless with the unending fire-drill routine of monitoring CVs nightly. Kind of a "been there, done that" attitude. I think I was just looking for another challenge. So I started adding LPVs to my program. A few at first, but then the sickness took over and I wanted to observe them all! My printer worked overtime for weeks churning out charts. Surely now I would have enough stars to keep me busy. Then I discovered EBs. This is perfect, I thought. Many of these are pretty bright so I can observe them during full moon! Now I had it all figured out. I would observe CVs every night, do one or two constellations worth of LPVs per night, and during full moon I would concentrate on the EBs and a few of the brighter CVs. I made over 10,000 observations that year. I decided to drop the EBs because the weather kept messing me up. There is nothing more frustrating than to park on a couple stars for hours only to get skunked by clouds after getting one half of a light curve. I've managed to whittle down the remaining list of stars to some degree. Some I dropped because they were too far south, or because the were boring (UV Cas!). A few I dropped because I suck at observing them (CH Cyg!), and some I dropped because for one reason or another I just kept skipping them anyway, so why feel guilty passing the chart each night in the binder. The problem is obvious. I am hopelessly addicted to this activity and I have a problem culling the herd because I love them all like pets, instead of the sheep they are. Some of the suggestions made have given me some ideas about what to continue with and what to drop. Thank you. I'll probably lose more sleep deciding which ten stars to do with a CCD than I will from observing with it when that time comes. Regards, Mike _______________________________________________ Aavso-discussion mailing list Aavso-discussion@mira.aavso.org http://mira.aavso.org/mailman/listinfo/aavso-discussion -- This message has been scanned for viruses and dangerous content by MailScanner, and is believed to be clean. Mailscanner thanks transtec Computers for their support.
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