[vsnet-chat 5939] About VS organizations and different type of osbervers

["Sebastian Otero" <varsao@fullzero.com.ar>]

Dear all,

>  The AAVSO should never be compared to those groups. It's apples and
> oranges. I am sure the 580 members of the AAVSO Discussion Group dwarfs
> the membership of a single CBA or VSNET chat list. The group dynamics
> change completely on those scales. In addition, our missions are far
> different. The scope of the AAVSO is large and doesn't just concern a
> single CV campaign, for example. It involves all variables, all types

It's not a good aproach to make this kind of comparison to stress one
organization's work.
I totally agree that maybe the missions are different but it is totally
incorrect to confine VSNET work to CV's and say that AAVSO studies "all
variables, all types" of stars. It's not true.
AAVSO strength is its huge database and the combination of hundreds of
different observers' data. In this framework it is easy to understand the
defense of the consistency of the database. But this unavoidable leaves
aside several types of stars -and observers too- that have different
preferences.
Be stars and small amplitude variables in general are out of the scope of
the AAVSO because a typical observational error of 0.2 mag. is considered as
normal. The combination of several people's measurements of these stars ends
up with a useless mess given the small amplitude of the variations. So it is
natural that these stars are not in the observing plan of the AAVSO and no
charts are issued for them.
Almost all my observing plan falls in this category. So "not all variables"
are covered by AAVSO.
And VSNET is not only focused on CV's, since my discovery of delta Sco and
delta Vel were given a headline status there and the real-time publications
and data-exchange through VSNET hava allowed a lot of colaborations with
professional astronomers to be made easier and faster than in any other way.
So we shouldn't compare.

VSNET has been recommending the use of V mag. comparison stars since long
time ago and allowed observers to report observations for any star.
Since a lot of observers report to both organizations, they mostly use AAVSO
charts for their observations.
But some vsnet observers like me just use the best V mag. available for the
comparison stars.
So even this mix ends up reflecting more closely the true behaviour of the
star than that expressed by using poor charts.


> Larger
> missions take longer and are more complicated, but are more rewarding.
> Both types are valid and have important roles to play, but one should
> never mix them up.

I don't know what is large and if the size is what actually matters..;-))
I would leave only the last sentence: "both types are valid".

But the freedom that VSNET offers has been more rewarding to me.

Best wishes,
Sebastian.


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