We'd like to announce the debut of the web site for the Center for Backyard Astrophysics (CBA). It can be found at:
http://www.astro.columbia.edu/~cba/
The CBA is a group of amateur and professional astronomers (mostly amateur) collaborating to study the light curves of variable stars. Mostly we study cataclysmic variables, and mostly we do so with "time-series" photometry (successive measurements over a few-hour interval, the longer the better). We are very interested in collaborating with observers scattered around the world, since many timescales of interest (few hours to a few days) tend to be confounded by the nasty effects of Earth rotation. Most CBA stations have CCDs and small (~25 cm) telescopes, although there are also photoelectric photometers and larger (~1 m) telescopes in our midst.
At the web site you'll find more information on:
* the history and mission of the CBA: who we are and what we do * news pertaining to recent events and findings regarding CVs (especially SU UMa and DQ Her stars) and our CBA newsletter * finding charts and observing strategies for stars in our program * lists and texts of CBA publications, and references especially useful to observers * links to other astronomy sites of interest.
For those without World Wide Web access, most of the information at the web site can be retrieved by anonymous FTP to tristram.phys.columbia.edu in /pub/cba/.
Please drop by our new site if you have a few spare moments. We welcome any comments or questions you have either about the web site or about the stars and subjects that interest us! We can be reached at cba@astro.columbia.edu.
Jonathan Kemp
Center for Backyard Astrophysics
and Department of Astronomy, Columbia University
jonathan@astro.columbia.edu
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