From France to Buffalo in Seven Hours By Car

Several months ago I was invited by French AAVSO member, Laurent Corp, to give a talk for CAPAS 2012, a pro-am astronomy conference on double stars and variable stars in Rodez, France. I was happy to oblige and agreed to give a talk on 'Pulsating Stars in the AAVSO Program'. Neither the organizers or I could afford to fly me to France, so we agreed to do the presentation via Skype.

I sent them an advance copy of my PowerPoint which they translated into French. They would display the slides on two screens, one in English, the other in French, and on a third screen would be the live webcam shot of my cheery face, blown up to giant talking head dimensions. The early afternoon time slot I was assigned translated to 8:30AM local time on Saturday, September 29, the same day I was leaving to drive to Boston, via Buffalo, New York.

Mike Simonsen, the giant talking head

I logged into Skype around 8AM and began my talk around 8:40, as the talks before me had begun to run long and late. I essentially covered the history of observations of pulsating stars in the AAVSO, the types of pulsating stars we observe today, and some of the current questions in astrophysics related to stellar pulsation. I was able to stay on for a while after my talk to monitor some of the other speakers as they gave their talks, but eventually it was time to load my suitcase and computer bag in the car and head east towards New York. 

Buffalo is a 7 hour drive from my home in Michigan, which happens to be almost exactly half-way between home and Boston. Realizing that the Patriots were playing the Buffalo Bills on Sunday, September 30, I had decided rather last minute to see if I could get a ticket to the game. I could drive to Buffalo on Saturday, go to the game on Sunday and drive the rest of the way to AAVSO HQ Monday morning. As luck would have it, a very good single seat ticket was available in a season ticket holder section down near the 20 yard line. I snatched it up and set the plan in motion.

The drive to Buffalo was uneventful, and I was just able to score a decent hotel room west of Buffalo for the night. I drove to Ralph Wilson Stadium early Sunday morning so I could check out the tailgate partying, pick up a souvenier and shoot some pictures. Deciding not to wear my Patriots hoodie, I opted to go incognito, disguised as a Buffalo fan. I purchased a crazy, fuzzy Bills hat to complete my disguise. Peaking into a VIP tent set up in the parking lot, I got to meet a couple of the Bill's cheerleaders, who obliged me with a picture. The Patriots won the game, coming from behind in the second half so everything worked out great!

Mike, his crazy hat and two Buffalo Jills

I drove into Boston, early Monday morning and arrived shortly after noon. The next four days were filled with meetings from 8:30AM to 5:30PM and working at my desk and tallking on the phone until 11PM. We had some very productive meetings, discussing AAVSOnet, CHOICE, fundraising, grant writing, the variable star plotter, a new binocular program, and various other topics. When I left for home on Friday morning my to do list from those meetings was two pages long!

My next trip to Boston will be for the fall meeting. I'm sharing the drive with Kevin Paxson and Dan Taylor. I hope to see you there. Until next time...

Leslie Peltier: The World's Greatest Amateur Astronomer

Leslie Peltier

"The world's greatest non-professional astronomer."

That is what Harlow Shapley called Leslie Peltier. If that is true, then why don't more people know about Peltier? I think the simple truth is he was a very private, soft-spoken man, who never sought the limelight and would have been embarrassed by all the attention he gets nowadays.

I've tried several times to write about Leslie Peltier, but every time before, I have begun thumbing through his classic book, Starlight Nights, for references and quotes and ended up reading the whole thing from cover to cover again instead of writing the piece that was my original intention. I'll never get tired of reading it. There are a lot of books that tell you how to observe the heavens and what you will find when you do, but this book always reminds me of why I love to be out under the stars at the eyepiece of a telescope, soaking in the sounds and smells of nature and admiring the majesty of the universe with my own eyes.

Born in January 1900, on a farm outside of Delphos, Ohio, Leslie grew up in a less complicated time, among the forests and farm fields of the area he lived his entire life. If he was famous for anything, it was his unwillingness to leave his home. He had everything he needed right there in Delphos- his family, his home, his gardens, and his observatories. Why would he want to leave any of that? So it was, that later in his life people made the pilgrimage to come visit him. Leslie was not likely to be making a public appearance anywhere near you. You had to go to the mountain.


As a boy Leslie was fascinated by the natural world around him. He read books from his family's home library and learned abut the flora and fauna that appeared on and around his home in nature guides, such as Wood's Natural History and Gray's Botany. He thoroughly enjoyed identifying each new butterfly, bird and flower. In 1977 he published The Place On Jennings Creek, a book relating the past 25 years of gardens and critters that shared the natural setting of his home with Leslie and his wife, Dorothy. 


It's kind of surprising that it took Leslie until he was in high school to realize that his natural world extended upwards, over the tree tops, past the clouds and out into the Universe into the night sky. He recalls in Starlight Nights the moment it dawned in him that he could name all the butterflies on his farm but didn't know the names of any of the stars in the heavens. One evening in May-

 "Something- perhaps it was a meteor- caused me to look up for a moment. Then, literally out of that clear sky, I suddenly asked myself: "Why do I not know a single one of those stars?"

Thus began an epic journey of discovery and observation that lasted the rest of his life. Peltier learned the stars on his own using only his eyes for the first year. He always felt this was the best way to learn the sky, as opposed to having someone teach the constellations or telescopic showpieces without investing the time and effort to become familiar with each one and its place in the heavens. 

"Each star had cost an effort. For each there had been planning, watching and anticipation. Each one recalled to me a place, a time, a season. Each one now has a personality. The stars, in short, had become my stars."

His first telescope was purchased with earnings from picking strawberries. He had to pick 900 quarts at two cents a piece one summer to save up the $18.00 for his mail order 2" spyglass telescope. He made his own alt-azimuth mount for the telescope out of a left over fence post, an old grind stone and discarded two by fours. This telescope served him well as he learned the sky and how to use a telescope to view the heavens. 


His fatal attraction to variable stars and the AAVSO began when he wrote a letter to AAVSO founder, William Tyler Olcott asking how he could contribute to science with his small telescope. Olcott wrote back explaining that observing variable stars was an exciting and scientifically useful way to spend ones time under the stars, and from the time Leslie was eighteen until his death in 1980 he never missed sending in a monthly report of variable star observations to AAVSO headquarters in Cambridge, MA. His description of how variable star observing changed his life forever is something I have quoted often to many people. 

"Life was never quite the same for me after that winter walk to town. The charts that I brought home with me were potent and ensnaring and I feel it my duty to warn any others who may show signs of star susceptibility that they approach the observing of variable stars with the utmost caution. It is easy to become and addict and, as usual, the longer the indulgence is continued the more difficult it becomes to go back to a normal life."

In 1919, Peltier was given the first of several telescopes that would be loaned, or given to him outright, based on his exceptional observing skills and perseverance. The AAVSO loaned him a 4-inch refractor with which to make variable star observations, and he immediately put it to good use by observing even fainter variable stars. Two years later, after enduring hundreds of nights in the dew and cold his father suggested it was time they build a proper observatory for Leslie. This observatory soon housed an even larger telescope, the 'Comet-Catcher.'


In 1925, he discovered his first comet, using the Comet-Catcher, a 6-inch refractor on loan from Henry Norris Russell of Princeton University. He would go on to discover 11 more comets in his lifetime, the last one in 1954. He also discovered four naked eye novae and made a habit of checking up on some old novae that still varied and occasionally had recurrent outbursts.  

Leslie with the 2" spyglass in front of the
dome of the 12" Clark refractor 

In 1959, life took a very unexpected turn when Miami of Ohio University offered to give Leslie their 12-inch Clark refractor, complete with observatory, dome and transit room! The entire observatory was cut into sections and delivered 125 miles to the Peltier home, where it was re-assembled and served Leslie as he strove to observe the faint minima of many of the variables he followed for decades. With this telescope he could follow stars down to 15th or 16th magnitude, far fainter than his other telescopes would allow. In total, Leslie Peltier submitted over 132,000 variable star observations to the AAVSO, making him one of the all-time leading observers in history.

Peltier's life was a long, steady, calm procession of days and nights lived to the fullest and enjoyed for their blessings, punctuated by events like the appearance of a new comet or nova, or unexpected recognitions for doing what Leslie would have done even if no one noticed. 


Overcoming his lack of formal education, Leslie dropped out of school after the 10th grade to work on his father's farm, he received an honorary doctorate from Bowling Green State University in 1947. In 1965, a mountain in California, home of the AAVSO's Ford Observatory, was named Mt. Peltier in his honor. In 1975, he received an honorary high school diploma from his home town's  Delphos Jefferson High School.

In his obituary, written by friend and fellow AAVSOer, Carolyn Hurless, she says, 

"Leslie was able to accomplish all he did because he was a private person. He lived exactly as he wanted to. He did nothing he didn't wish to do and was able to say "no" very easily. He was very uncomfortable with those who sought him out because he was famous, but to those fellow variable star observers who visited, he was a warm and welcoming individual."

Shortly after his death in 1980, the Astronomical League established The Leslie C. Peltier Award "to be presented to an amateur astronomer who contributes to astronomy observations of lasting significance," and that is where our histories finally intersect. In July 2012, I became the 30th recipient of the Leslie Peltier Award at the Astronomical League Convention in Chicago, Illinois.

Finding myself uncharacteristically speechless and unprepared, this is what I wish I would have said when asked to say a few words.

"I've known about Leslie Peltier, the great amateur astronomer and variable star observer, for years. I've  heard the reverence in people's voices when he is mentioned in conversation. I've read Starlight Nights more than any other book I can think of. And when I do, I'm always struck by the similarities in our experiences. 

I too learned the sky and the names of all the stars and constellations on my own, through books and star charts borrowed from the library. I earned the money to buy my first telescope by getting up early in the morning and delivering papers door to door for far longer than I ever dreamed I could endure. His story about seeing something in the sky he couldn't explain during the UFO crazed 1950's, and the fact that it turned out to be geese flying in formation, is exactly like the story I have told my friends and will share with my grandchildren one day, about a winter night in 1980. I too, have received a telescope on loan from the AAVSO, as well as a CCD with which to observe variable stars. Even the opening paragraphs of Starlight Nights, where he describes walking down the path towards the two stark-white structures as night falls reminds me of my walk to my observatories each clear night.  

But when he writes about his love of variable stars, and how he gets excited each night, year after year, to go spend some time with his old friends, that is when I hear my passion and my words coming out of his mouth. I am a hopeless variable star addict like Leslie, having now submitted over 80,000 observations of my own to the AAVSO.

Awards and accolades are great, but like Leslie, I would have done it all anyway. I don't think I really had a choice.  

It is because of who this award is named for that it means so very much to me. I'd like to thank my wife, Irene, for supporting me and enabling my addiction. Thank you to the Astronomical League for this very special and meaningful recognition. And thank you, Leslie Peltier, for being an inspiration and role model for amateur astronomers everywhere who want to reach for the stars and explore the Universe on their own terms, in their own time and in their own way."

The 2012 Leslie C. Peltier Award
proudly displayed on my office wall

Pennsylvania Star Party Adventure

I had been looking forward to this trip since last October. That is when we took a side trip on our way back from the AAVSO Centennial Celebration in Boston through the northwestern part of Pennsylvania known as the Pennsylvania Wilds. The landscape is dominated by state forests among some of the most picturesque mountains, valleys, rivers and streams in America. We stayed in Wellsboro, a quaint village with a boulevard main street dotted with antique shops, bed and breakfasts and restaurants on State Highway 6. We did some sightseeing and picture shooting at the rim of the Pennsylvania Grand Canyon, (that’s right, Pennsylvania has a Grand Canyon, and you should see it in the fall!), and then drove west on Highway 6 to find the Kinzua Skywalk which had opened just a months before we arrived.

The Kinzua Skywalk is what remains of an old railroad bridge that spanned a 400-foot deep gorge. About a decade ago they were refurbishing the bridge when it took a direct hit from a tornado, twisting and breaking most of the support columns and leaving them strewn on the floor of the canyon. You can still see the scar on the landscape where the tornado stripped all the trees from the sides of the mountains. On the south side of the gorge a few of the columns remained, so they’ve made a park out of the site and you can walk out to the end of what remains of the bridge and peer over the sides at the destruction or through the glass bottom floor at the valley 400 feet below.

In between the Grand Canyon and the Kinzua Skywalk, Highway 6 bisects the small town of Coudersport. Coudersport plays host to two annual star parties at the nearby Cherry Springs State Park. This was our destination on this trip, for the Cherry Springs Star Party.

We left Wednesday morning after 9am. It’s an 8-hour drive from Michigan to Coudersport, which after driving to the Texas, Nebraska and the Winter Star Party in Florida seemed like a jog across town. We checked into our hotel, unloaded our baggage and did a little exploring to check out the local eateries. We ended up having dinner that night and most other nights, at KayTee’s, the restaurant two doors down from our hotel.

Thursday morning we headed out to the Cherry Springs State Park, which is about 15 miles from town up a winding mountain road. The park sits on top of a mountain at 2300 feet. Unlike most places I’ve been to for star parties, this park is designed specifically for astronomical viewing. They have AC power pedestals throughout the observing field, concrete pads to sit telescopes on and permanent observatories you can rent year round. There are porta-potties conveniently located around the park, as well as a small building with running water and flush toilets near the gate. The field is large and the trees have been cut back all around to provide a good view almost to the horizon, yet there are plenty of them to block any stray light from the rare car passing in the night. There were already a couple hundred campers set up from the night before when we arrived Thursday morning, the first official day of the star party. We set up our tent, camping gear and the 12” LX200 in about an hour. We’re getting pretty good at this.

Across the road from the park is a public viewing area and astronomy trail for naked eye or binocular astronomers, with its own parking area and berms to block any stray light from the road. All in all, this is one of the darkest places I’ve ever been. Saturday morning at 4AM I could not see my car twenty feet away as I left the star party to head back to the hotel. The only clue I had I was heading in the right direction was the sound of the gravel parking lot under my boots. I had to hit the button on the key fob to flash the lights on the car to find it.

Thursday night was clear and cold. Irene took a peek at Saturn, tried a few astro-photos and then retreated to the tent and crawled under a blanket and shivered until dawn. The guy camped next to us had a 25-inch Obsession Dobsonian. He had a lot of visitors during the night anxious to see galaxies and nebulae that looked like something more than faint fuzzies in the eyepiece. I heard a lot of oohs and ahs coming from the top of the ladder as his guests would ogle deep sky treasures. I explained to him that I was usually the loneliest guy at a star party, because no one ever wanted to look at variable stars…too boring.

The sky was dark but the seeing wasn’t terrific. Still, I was able to log some pretty faint observations and see mid 15^th magnitude stars with direct vision. This was definitely my best star party observing session in the last year. I stuck to familiar targets, doing about 70 CVs in Com, Boo, CrB, Ser, Her, Lyr, Vul and Cyg before the waning crescent moon rose above the trees around 3:45AM. By then I was pretty tired, so Irene and I made our way to the car parked across the road and headed back to the hotel as dawn broke over the misty mountains of PA.

I slept most of the day until Irene came back from exploring to take me to the park. I was giving a talk on variable stars and the AAVSO and wanted to get there early to set up the presentation and box of handouts I had brought along. The crowd gathered for my talk wasn’t huge, but they were definitely interested. The question and answer session after went on almost as long as the talk and I gave away nearly all the ten-star tutorials, pamphlets and bookmarks I had brought. I showed them a map of where I was located on the astronomy field and announced that I would be doing a variable star workshop at the telescope all night long for anyone who was interested in actually trying to make variable star observations.

We drove back to town for dinner, I took a nap and Irene settled in for the night in our hotel suite. She wasn’t going to be caught dead in a tent, in the dark, in the cold, in PA again on this trip. I arrived back at camp around dusk and there were already people milling around waiting for the “variable star guy to get here.” As soon as the sky was dark enough I started showing people T CrB in a low power eyepiece on the 12-inch. I’d explain how the chart related to the view in the eyepiece, what the numbers next to the comparison stars represented and taught each one how to make an estimate of the brightness of T CrB. I also related the story of Leslie Peltier’s waiting for decades for T CrB to erupt, and how on the one night he decided to stay in because he thought he might be catching a cold, T CrB went into outburst while he lay sleeping in his bed.

I expected the crowd to thin out any time all night long, but they just kept coming, one or two at a time usually. I could hear them finding their way in the dark. “Hey, is this the way to the variable star guy’s telescope?” From about 1AM until 3AM there were five of us taking turns at each star. We would all look at the field and then when everyone had seen it we would reveal our estimates. I was glad to see everyone was in pretty fair agreement on all the targets, especially after doing a few. With just a little practice they were all quite comfortable making the call, and proud to see they were coming up with the same answers as “the variable star guy.”

As a reward for making their first estimate I was giving out some AAVSO buttons I had gotten from HQ. When those ran out I started giving away Centennial T-shirts. I ran out of steam about the same time as the last die-hard observers called it a night. I passed out t-shirts to the last four observers, and as I was packing up eyepieces and covering the telescope for the night I heard a voice in the dark say, “You’re not the loneliest guy at the star party anymore, are you?” I drove down the mountain in the pre-dawn glow feeling tired, but strangely satisfied. I slept like a stone until 11AM Saturday morning, which is later than I’ve slept in in years.

We decided that the weather was looking a little iffy and it would be better to break camp on Saturday and drive home Sunday early that to do it all on Sunday after a short rest from staying up all night. So we headed out to Cherry Springs, where I visited the vendors to make a deal for a couple Ethos eyepieces, Irene got some last pictures of the camp, we packed up the tent, gear and telescope and said goodbye to our new friends.

On the way back to the hotel, we stopped in a couple places to do some antique shopping and visited a remarkable, eclectic, funky little eatery and art gallery in Coudersport named Olga’s Gallery, Café and Bistro. Olga is this remarkable woman from the Ukraine who has decorated and painted the entire two story shop in her own style and color combinations. She’s packed it full of her own artwork in a dozen mediums, from paint to jewelry to yarn, and serves excellent food and drinks along with her husband who works behind the bar. If you ever find yourself driving through Coudersport, PA, you have to stop in to experience this place. It is literally the last thing you would ever expect to find in a small town in PA.

After studying some maps and pamphlets I’d picked up along the way, I suggested that we take the long way home on Sunday to take advantage of the nice weather and the scenic byways I’d read about in the travel brochures. This plan had the added bonus of letting us skip the Interstate 86 part of the route we’d taken to get there. I-86 is in terrible condition, and I had no desire to go thumping along on that old slab of rough concrete for 100 miles on the way to Erie, PA. Our alternate route would take us along rushing rivers and stone cliffs busting out of forest covered mountains, eventually spilling us onto I-80 where we could cruise home at light speed through PA and Ohio to get home in time to feed the cats dinner and watch the sunset from our own front porch in the Michigan countryside.

We made some wrong turns, got a little lost and discovered some unexpected treasures in the forests of Pennsylvania that Sunday. So it was worth the extra time and miles to go the scenic route. We’ve decided we really like Pennsylvania, and we’ll be going back again soon. They have another star party at Cherry Springs in the fall called the Black Forest Star Party. I think I can hear the fall colors and clear skies calling.

Koji Mukai on X-rays and Dwarf Novae

This is the second time Koji Mukai has granted me
an interview. The first time we discussed magnetic CVs,
intermediate polars specifically. That interview can be
read here.

Now Koji is back to discuss RU Peg and the X-ray
behavior of dwarf novae with massive white dwarfs.




CVnet: Hi, Koji. Thank you for granting us another interview. Let's start with
where are you working now and what are your primary responsibilities?
Also, what are you current areas of research?

Mukai: I work at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, although my employer
is University of Maryland, Baltimore County. I work at the
US Guest Observer Facility for the joint Japan-US Suzaku mission,
and also work on the education and public outreach group of the
astrophysics science division here. My research has always focused
on accreting white dwarfs - it still does, but over the last few
years it has expanded from just CVs to CVs and symbiotic stars.
I'm interested both in accretion and mass ejection during nova
outbursts.

CVnet: Are you still maintaining the Intermediate Polars pages?

Mukai: Yes, although I haven't had the time to make a substantial update
for the last year or so. There are quite a few new confirmed
and candidate IPs to add to the site!

CVnet: AAVSO Alert Notice 459 states you are requesting monitoring of the dwarf nova,
RU Peg, in anticipation of the next outburst. Let's discuss why RU Peg is so interesting,
and what you hope to learn by observing it with Swift.

Mukai: RU Peg is a bright dwarf nova that has been neglected, relatively
speaking, for X-ray observations. For dwarf novae, it is very
important to conduct X-ray monitoring campaigns through an outburst.
Now that RXTE has been decomissioned, Swift is the only observatory
for this type of campaign.

CVnet: Since your observations will be in the X-ray, where do X-rays in dwarf novae originate?

Mukai: In a dwarf nova, half the available gravitational potential energy is
radiated away in the accretion disk - that's a source of infrared,
visible, and ultraviolet light. The other half of the potential
energy has been converted into the kinetic energy of the disk material,
moving at several thousand kilometers per second. Since the white
dwarf is rotating much more slowly than this, that motion must suddenly
cease in a very small region - what we call the boundary layer. That's
where the X-rays originate in dwarf novae.


CVnet: How does the amount of X-rays emitted change between the quiescent and outburst
phases of the dwarf novae?

Mukai: That actually depends on what you mean by "X-rays." But if you mean
X-rays in the traditional band (photon energies of 2-10 keV, or
wavelengths of about 1-5 Angstroms), dwarf novae become fainter during
outburst than in quiescence.

Below are the AAVSO and RXTE light curves of WW Cet from
a recent paper I was involved in. This shows what I now think of

as "typical" behavior. X-ray bright in quiescence, X-ray faint in outburst, 

with sudden a transition and no intermediate states.

From 2011PASP..123.1054F  Fertig, D.; Mukai, K.; Nelson, T.; Cannizzo, J. K. 

The Fall and the Rise of X-Rays from Dwarf Novae in Outburst: RXTE Observations of VW Hydri and WW Ceti

CVnet: What do we think is happening as the outburst begins in the accretion disc
to cause this X-ray suppression?

Mukai: In quiescence, the boundary layer is optically thin - that is, X-ray
photons, once emitted, escape the boundary layer without interacting
with matter. In outburst, much more matter is flowing through the
boundary layer, so the density is much higher. In this case, the
boundary layer becomes optically thick - X-ray photons emitted by
the ions interact with surrounding matter several times before
they are able to escape. In this situation, the temperature of
the boundary layer drops, and only lower energy X-rays ("soft"
X-rays, as in X-rays that cannot penetrate matter that much) are
emitted - with energies below 0.5 keV. The optically thin case
is like the corona of the sun, the optically thick case is like
the photosphere of the sun. In fact, during outburst, the boundary
layer has both the photosphere-like region and the corona-like region.

If the line of sight to the dwarf nova is relatively free of
interstellar matter, then we can observe dwarf novae brighten
dramatically during outburst in soft X-rays and extreme ultraviolet.

CVnet: Isn't this the opposite of what has been observed in prior campaigns on SS Cygni?

Mukai: No, not really. During the peak of the outburst (as determined by
visible light observers), SS Cyg is fainter in hard X-rays and brighter
in soft X-rays. It's in the time of transitions that SS Cyg has
shown a behavior pattern that has not been seen in other dwarf novae.
Other systems have shown "quiescent" (hard X-ray bright) and
"outburst" (hard X-ray dim) states, and nothing else. SS Cyg,
on the other hand, initially brightens in hard X-rays (near the
time of the peak visible light) before switching to hard X-ray
faint/soft X-ray bright state. There is another hard X-ray brightening
near the end of the outburst. So, in hard X-rays, it goes from
bright-brighter-faint-brighter-bright through an outburst.

You can see this in the light curves here.

CVnet: Does this mean SS Cygni is actually the exception to the rule, and not the
prototype as most people have always assumed?

Mukai: You can still consider SS Cyg to be the prototype of the hard X-ray
bright (quiescence) - dim (outburst) behavior. It appears to be
an exception in showing the bright-brighter-faint-brighter-bright
behavior.

CVnet: How does the mass of the white dwarf come into play in the whole process?

Mukai: The accretion rate at which the boundary layer switches from the
optically thin regime to the optically thick regime is believed to
be a strong function of the white dwarf mass, according to theoretical
studies. The higher the white dwarf mass, the higher the accretion
rate at which the transition occurs. The state change of the disk,
between quiescence and outburst, is governed by the conditions in
the disk, and is far less sensitive to the white dwarf mass. When
the disk goes into outburst, the accretion rate through the boundary
layer rises, making it optically thick for an average mass white
dwarf, while making it brighter but still optically thin for a
high mass white dwarf - at least that''s a physically motivated
explanation of why SS Cyg might behave differently from the average
dwarf novae.

CVnet: Is this the main reason for selecting RU Pegasi as your target for the Swift campaign?

Mukai: Yes, we believe that the white dwarf in the RU Peg system is among the
most massive for a dwarf nova. Also, it is one of the X-ray brightest
dwarf novae for which an X-ray monitoring campaign has never been
done.

CVnet: How do you know the mass of the white dwarf in RU Peg?

Mukai: In the optical spectra of RU Peg, you can see both the mass donor and
the accretion disk, so the radial velocity motion of both stars can
be measured, with the usual caveats.

CVnet: So what if we don't see the same X-ray behavior as SS Cyg when RU Peg goes into outburst?
Will the campaign still prove useful scientifically?

Mukai: That would be a very important result, because it would have disproved
our current hypothesis. We will have to go back to square one in terms
of trying to understand why SS Cyg is different, but that's how science
is supposed to work.

CVnet: Thanks, Koji. Any final comments or advice for our observers?

Mukai: Thank you, and thanks to all the AAVSO observers out there who make
this kind of research possible!

Reaching Across The Great Divide

Yesterday I received an email containing pictures of an Iranian astronomy magazine cover and the article pages of an interview I gave several months ago. To be honest, I'd forgotten about the whole thing, so this was quite a surprise. The Night Sky cover and interior pages are very colorful. Unfortunately, I can't read Farsi, so I'm not sure what portions of the interview made it into print.

They asked questions about the AAVSO, variable stars and my own personal story. They were also interested in how much I knew about their science and astronomy culture and history. I hope I passed the 'Ugly American Test'!

It also dawned on me that this is probably why I've had a sudden surge in Facebook friend requests from the Middle East. It's good to know that in spite of our governments' differences, people can still communicate in the universal language of curiosity and the pursuit of scientific answers.

Assuming that most or all of the questions and answers exchanged in the interview made it into print, here is the text of the interview I returned to them.

Please tell us about yourself and AAVSO.

Founded in 1911, the AAVSO is the world’s largest variable star organization, and is the world leader in information and data on variable stars. The AAVSO coordinates, evaluates, compiles, processes, publishes, and disseminates variable star observations to the astronomical community throughout the world. We have approximately 1200 members and 2500 observers from countries all over the world. In 2011, we celebrated our 100^th year of collecting and archiving variable star data.

I am one of the world’s most active variable star observers. I observe cataclysmic variables and long period variables, like Mira, using my own telescopes and robotic telescopes that are part of the AAVSO’s robotic telescope network, AAVSOnet.

I work for the AAVSO as Membership Director and Development Officer. My primary responsibilities are to serve our current members and to grow the membership, as well as to obtain funding to support the organization's mission and programs.

However, like most people who work for a non-profit science organization, I wear many hats. I am also in charge of variable star chart production for the AAVSO, a contributing author of the AAVSO Newsletter, coordinator of the AAVSO Mentor Program, and administrator of the Cataclysmic Variable Section, LPV Section, Speakers Bureau, Writers Bureau and Facebook page.

What is the main goal of the association and who are the key member of the scientific committee in AAVSO?

The AAVSO is an international non-profit organization of variable star observers whose mission is:

• to observe and analyze variable stars
• to collect and archive observations for worldwide access
• to forge strong collaborations between amateur and professional astronomers
• to promote scientific research and education using variable star data.

The AAVSO Director, Dr. Arne Henden, is the chief operating officer and astronomical representative of the organization. Dr. Matthew Templeton is the Science Director. The other acting science committee chairs are actually the observing section leaders, who are divided among the major different types of variable stars.

Were you interested in astronomy from childhood or by chance you got into this field?

My interest was inspired by a science teacher in grade school who told us we could calculate the approximate height of mountains on the Moon using the angle of the Sun to our point of view and the shadows they cast. I thought, “Mountains on the Moon? What do those look like?” From that moment on I was completely fascinated by astronomy. I bought a small telescope with money from my newspaper route and read every book in our public library by the time I was a teenager.

Like many of us, my interest in astronomy waned as a young adult. I was busy going to university, building a career, getting married and raising a family. I did not become a professional astronomer, I was a musician, and then later a landscape designer/contractor. There was little time for hobbies or obsessions like astronomy. The desire to own a big telescope and contribute to science was buried deep in my heart; I just didn’t have the time or money to follow up on it until I got older.

In 1998, my father-in-law bought a small telescope and had astronomy magazines strewn on his coffee table when we went to visit him. Seeing them and discussing astronomy with him rekindled the fire in me. This time it could not be contained. I bought the telescope of my dreams, learned how to navigate the stars, and began observing variable stars like a man obsessed.

At the time when you joined astronomy, at what level was the science of Astronomy of the world compared to today?

Since I returned to astronomy our basic understanding of the Universe has not changed that much. But there are some things that have been discovered in the last decade that are pretty remarkable, like the acceleration of the expansion of the universe, the number and variety of planets around other stars, the nature of gamma ray bursts, and the mysteries of dark matter and dark energy.

Which one of Iranian scientist do you know? How much you know about “Abd al-Rahman al-Sufi” , “Khaje Nasir al-Din al-Tusi” and “Abu al-Rayhan al-Biruni”and... ? how about amateur astronomers?

The most famous Iranian scientists I know of is the brilliant Professor Mahmoud Hesabi, who is of course the father of physics and space science in Iran. I am not very familiar with any contemporary scientists.

I know of Abd al-Rahman al-Sufi because of his historical brightness estimates of stars, particularly, Polaris, the North Star. A colleague of mine has used them in a study of the long-term changes in Polaris’ brightness. Polaris is a Cepheid variable, but its overall brightness appears to have changed over the last several hundred years. This could not be known without accurate historical records like those of Abd al-Rahman al-Sufi.

Khaje Nasir al-Din al-Tusi was a pre-Copernican scientists and philosopher, but I do not know very much about his specific achievements or his life and career. Abu al-Rayhan al-Biruni is not a name I know. I hope I have not flunked the exam!

I do not know any Iranian amateur astronomers personally, but I am beginning to have contact with more and more Iranian students and scientists through Facebook and other social media these days. The AAVSO and I are very willing to make friends with people all over the world who are interested in variable stars, stellar evolution and research.

Recently the study of Astronomy has been increasing from universities to schools and even public places like parks, can you give me a reason for this?

I think everyone has a curiosity about the heavens and the stars and where we came from and what is the ultimate fate of the Universe. Religion and philosophy attempt to provide many of those answers, but mankind is a curious beast and his inquiries have led him to investigate the Universe with the tools and methods of science.

This is undoubtedly why so many of the famous Iranian scientists were also mathematicians, philosophers, poets, geologists, and anthropologists. All those things are woven together in our search to understand ourselves, the Earth and the Universe we live in.

Tell us briefly about variable stars.

Variable stars are stars that change brightness on timescales of minutes to hours to days to centuries. Some of them change because they are actually pulsating, swelling and shrinking in a rhythm determined by their mass and the age of the star. Some vary because they have giant star spots, like sunspots but much bigger, and as these rotate into our field of view they appear to make the star dim. Some variable stars are actually close pairs of stars, so close we can’t see them as a double star. They may be lined up in such a manner that as they rotate around each other one eclipses the other from our point of view, and this eclipse causes a dimming in the total output of light from the pair. Yet other close pairs are entangled in a death spiral, where one star is constantly stealing material from its neighbor until it becomes unstable and a nuclear eruption takes place, making the system appear hundreds of times brighter to us on earth in a matter of hours. And finally, some variable stars are the final flash signaling the destruction of a massive star or pair of stars at the end of their evolutionary path.

These variations in brightness can help us to unlock the secrets to the stars themselves. What are they made of, how far away are they, what makes them shine, how large are they, how massive, how are they born and how will they end- all these things we can better understand by learning about variable stars.

Which variable stars interest you most and why?

First of all, I like variable stars that are bright enough I can study them with the tools I have at my disposal. I don’t want to read about them. I want to observe them with my own eyes or instruments.

As far as types of variable stars, I am fascinated by cataclysmic variables, close binaries, usually consisting of a white dwarf and a red dwarf orbiting so close to each other that the white dwarf robs the red star of its outer atmosphere, causing periodic eruptions. I also like RCB type stars. These are stars that can shine steadily for months or years and then suddenly fade by up to 8 or 9 magnitudes! This is believed to be caused by the star belching a load of carbon soot into its outer atmosphere, which dims it from our point of view until the cloud of dust dissipates and we can see the underlying star again. There are not that many of these special stars and there is much we do not know about them, like-how they are formed?

Are variable stars so important that they have dedicated research center to study them?

There are not really any research institutes in the USA devoted to pure astronomical research on specific topics related to variable stars. There are not a lot of institutes for any specific astronomical pursuit. Most research institutes cover a broad range of scientific astronomical activities, like solar or planetary sciences. The AAVSO could be considered the next nearest thing to that, but it is not currently a research institute. We are more engaged in acquiring and archiving data for dissemination than performing research on or with the data.

I believe that is something we should strive to become in the 21^st century, but that is venturing into a political discussion I won’t be elaborating on here.

As of now, how much do we know about variable stars?

What we know about variable stars today will mostly stand up to testing and theories a hundred years from now, but there is a LOT we don’t know. So I would say we have just opened the door and stepped inside, but we have not even turned on the lights and walked around this house yet.

Why in Hertzsprung-Russell diagram, variable stars are in the top of diagram?

This is factually incorrect. You are referring to AGB stars, but variable stars reside in places all over the H-R diagram outside of the main sequence. Essentially, anywhere stars leave the main sequence they are evolving and most likely also varying in brightness. Even stars on the main sequence vary. Our Sun is a variable star. Variable stars are everywhere, including all over the H-R diagram.

How much the destiny of mankind depends on Astronomy and variable stars?

I don’t think astronomy or variable star research will cure cancer, stop wars or make governments smarter or more benevolent. But our destiny is out there amongst the stars, eventually, if we last long enough to make that journey. When we go, it will be good to know as much as we can about what is out there, how to get where we are going and what we are likely to find when we arrive. Like every great migration of human beings, it will be an adventure full of discovery and danger, wonder and peril. We will want to be armed with knowledge as well as courage.

Where do you think our country (Iran) stand in the field of astronomy in 21 century?

As I confessed earlier, I do not know very much at all about the current state of research or education in astronomy and physics in Iran. Hopefully, political tensions between our countries and in the Middle East in general will ease to the point I can feel comfortable enough to come visit and find out for myself one day. I would like that very much.

Name some of the variable stars that are visible with naked eyes?

Mira, when it is at maximum. Betelgeuse, eta Geminorum, Algol, eta Aquilae, delta Cephei (the prototype of Cepheid variables), mu Cephei (Herschel’s Garnet Star), gamma Cassiopeia and of course, once every 30 years or so, epsilon Aurigae, another great mystery.

How can a person join the AAVSO?

Membership in the AAVSO is open to anyone—professionals, amateurs, and educators alike—interested in variable stars and in contributing to the support of valuable research. You can apply online at our websitehttp://www.aavso.org/aavso-membership

Annual dues are $60.00 US and $30.00 US for students, which is one of the best bargains in astronomy if you consider the benefits of membership in this prestigious organization.

I must remind you that you do not need to be a member of the AAVSO to become an AAVSO observer. We have many observers from other countries who are not paying members of the AAVSO, but their valuable observations are included in the AAVSO International Database.

A sentence about astronomy and yourself...

You mean you’re not tired of my opinions and me talking about myself yet? I don’t know what else to say!

I suppose I should warn you that you could become addicted to variable stars like me. I am a hopeless variable star junkie who must get his photon fix regularly or go mad. If you think you have any weakness in this regard, I caution you to approach observing variable stars with the utmost caution. It can be highly addicting, and the longer you do it the harder it becomes to go back to a normal life.

You have been warned…

Your last aphorism to us.

One of my favorites is from Harlow Shapley-

“Theories crumble, but good observations never fade.”

It Was Just A Tuesday

It was just a Tuesday, not unlike any other Tuesday, except I happened to be working in my office on the first floor of AAVSO headquarters in Cambridge. I opened my email and began responding to the messages that had come in since the previous night. Several members had renewed their membership, some had made donations with their renewals, some new members had signed up, TZ Per was in outburst, so I updated the CVnet page. Here was one from the sequence team telling me Tim Crawford had uploaded a sequence created by our newest team member Natalia Virnina, from Odessa, in the Ukraine.

I had witnessed Natalia’s AAVSO story right from the beginning. She had submitted a well-constructed proposal to observe several eclipsing binaries, using AAVSOnet telescopes. Unfortunately, she was not a member, and paying dues would have presented a hardship for her. No problem, Tom Krajci volunteered to sponsor her membership and within a few days he was setting up her observing plan and taking data for her.

As it turned out, almost none of her program stars had existing sequences, so she contacted Tim Crawford to request sequences for her observing targets. She was perfectly willing to do the work herself, if Tim could just show her the ins and outs of using SeqPlot and creating the proper files to upload into the comp star database. After a few basic tutorials Natalia was off and running, creating sequences for her program stars and sharing them with the sequence team. Shortly after that, Natalia became the newest member of the team and has been submitting work on a regular basis. This morning’s email was just the latest in a string of newly minted Virnina sequences uploaded to the database.

The next email was from a new member who wanted to learn how to use VPHOT. I called Ken Mogul in Georgia to see if he’d be willing to take him on as a student, and he gladly accepted. Ken is the one who made the video tutorials for VPHOT and was the person who taught me how to use it, so I knew he was qualified. I was glad we started our conversation on a positive note, because I was about to ask Ken to volunteer for another long-term project: examining all the images that are downloaded from AAVSOnet telescope K28 each night, and entering comments about them into a permanent record created by a snazzy tool called Remark-O-Matic and developed by Sara Beck. This was a new volunteer program and we had decided to ask Ken to be our test case.

Ken said he’d be happy to take on another project, even though he was already involved in several AAVSO volunteer efforts, and not only that, he asked me what I thought about the idea of him running for Council! I told him I thought he would be a great councilor. People who are willing to roll up their sleeves and work for the AAVSO as well as donate time and money to the organization are just the kind of people we need on council. I thanked him and wished him luck and moved on to the rest of the email in my folder.

Another email had arrived from a Dr. Knight in the United Kingdom, asking for some assistance in CCD photometry of exoplanet transits. I had to think about this, since I don’t have an “official” AAVSO mentor in the UK. I thought I would take a chance and write to Richard Miles, who I know is an excellent photometrist and scientist.

Richard is a past president of the British Astronomical Association, but I wasn’t even sure if he was an AAVSO member. I looked up his records in our database and was happy to discover he is a member of the AAVSO. The thing is, I hadn’t heard much from Richard lately and suspected he was rather busy. Considering his credentials, I thought it was worth a try, so I wrote to Richard to ask if he would kindly lend his expertise to help out a fellow Englishman looking to do some advanced observing.

Richard replied within ten minutes, explaining that he was and had been very busy, reviewing papers for journals and writing an extensive paper on comets for another, but that he would be glad to help out if I put him in touch with Dr. Knight.

Here was another email from a new member in Germany, responding to the “Welcome to the AAVSO” message I send to all the new people when they join. This one was from Katrin Fortak, or Katy, as she likes to be called.  She’s been observing variables with a CCD for about a year now, and complimented the AAVSO on the tools and information we offer. She especially appreciated VSP, VPHOT, and the CCD Manual.

As it turns out, she knew some other Germans interested in CCD photometry who don’t know English so well, and she wanted to know if it was okay if she translated the CCD manual into German for use by her friends and others. I discussed her generous offer with Matthew Templeton, and he gave me a Word doc version for her to work with, which would be easier than trying to re-create it from scratch using the pdf she had downloaded from the website.

Katy had some questions about exoplanet transits and short period eclipsing and pulsating stars, so I referred her to the respective section leaders and gave her what information I could to help. She also indicated she would be taking the CHOICE course on Variable Star Types and Light Curves that I would be teaching in May.

Katy’s letter continued, as she also volunteered to act as mentor for the AAVSO for anyone from Germany or surrounding countries - a very generous offer from someone who was still learning advanced techniques herself. But she had been impressed with the friendly helpful advice she had been getting in the AAVSO chat room, and thought it was only fair to pay it forward, in the best tradition of the AAVSO mentor program. I have every confidence she will be an excellent mentor. She is obviously very enthusiastic and her English is very good.

It is no secret that we had been having some problems with VPHOT recently. We had fallen victim to our own success - the high volume of images being uploaded and analyzed daily were now pushing the limits of our current cloud computing configuration - and we had been discussing how to proceed with the anticipated upgrade to more cloud computing power.

VPHOT is another example of the power of volunteers and donors, and how they can push the AAVSO forward by their sheer will and generosity. The program was written by Geir Klingenberg, an AAVSO member from Norway. Geir donated it and the copyright to AAVSO almost two years ago, and has been supplying the support needed to keep it running, as well as continuous incremental improvements along the way. The initial expense of hosting it on the Amazon cloud server had been paid for by AAVSO members Ken Mogul and Donn Starkey.

Now that we were making plans to upgrade to a more powerful instance on the cloud, another AAVSO member, Ken Menzies, had contacted me to tell me he would like to pay for the increase in power and bandwidth. Ken is a power user of the program, and had been aware of the rash of problems we were now experiencing as we had outgrown our baby teeth on the cloud. Several of us had spent our entire lunch period discussing how we were going to implement the changeover and now I was back in my office when Ken stopped by headquarters to drop off a generous check to pay for the impending upgrade.

Little did we realize that, as we sat in my office discussing VPHOT, AAVSOnet, the upcoming SAS/AAVSO meeting in Big Bear, Z Cam stars, and a host of other topics, thirty feet away in the office next door Doc Kinne had just watched our Amazon server disappear before his very eyes. We were moving to Plan B right now, and Ken’s check was going to be deposited today!

Plan B meant building a whole new version of VPHOT and launching it on the cloud as soon as possible. Unfortunately, Geir had been ill with the flu for several days and the clock was closing in on midnight for him as he struggled with Doc to reconstruct VPHOT and get it back online as soon as possible. This was the spirit of AAVSO volunteerism and unselfish sacrifice demonstrated at the highest levels.

Nobody complained. They just opened up their checkbooks, rolled up their sleeves, and got about the business of doing what was needed.

After the initial shock of what had just happened wore off, I got back to my email. A new visual observer from Colorado had just joined the AAVSO and he needed a mentor. I knew just the person for him: Roger Kolman. Roger has been an AAVSO observer and member for fifty years and has over 75,000 visual observations to his credit. He also has a great enthusiasm and love for variable stars and the AAVSO. I wrote to Roger asking if he had time to take on another student. Kolman wrote back saying he would be glad to help out a newbie and added jokingly that he “wasn’t sure how often he could get to Colorado to help the new guy.”

Of course he was kidding, since most of the instruction provided by our mentors happens via email, chat, Skype, and the telephone these days. But that is another reason I knew Roger would be a good choice - he’ll make learning to observe fun and interesting.

Later that night, as I threw myself on the bed in the Feibelman guest suite at HQ, it dawned on me what a perfect example of the spirit of the AAVSO today had been. Our members and observers speak volumes about what is really special about the AAVSO through their actions every day. They walk the walk. It was only Tuesday, I was exhausted, but I couldn’t wait for Wednesday. I have one of the best jobs in the world, and it’s because of the people I work for, the AAVSO.

The Kruta Telescope- A Labor of Love

The Kruta Telescope on display at AAVSO

If you've ever been to AAVSO headquarters, you've probably seen a small Maksutov telescope in a clear plastic case sitting on a shelf or cabinet in the front office. Its an unassuming table top scope on a little fork mount that looks more like a curiosity than a scientific instrument. If you're like me you probably wondered for about two seconds where it came from and what the story is behind it, and then never gave it another thought.

Quite by accident, the amazing story behind this little telescope revealed itself to me over the last few months, as I did research into the life of Carolyn Hurless, the most prolific female observer in AAVSO history. 

I first started to put the pieces together when I went to visit Don Hurless in Lima, Ohio, and he told me the story of Carolyn's long friendship with a Czechoslovakian observer. 

Back in the 1960's, at the height of the cold war, people from behind the Iron Curtain had to be sponsored by members of the AAVSO in order to receive newsletters, journals and the other member benefits of the day. Jaroslav Kruta of Czechoslovakia was sponsored by Carolyn and they began a lifetime of correspondence. Jaroslav was a piano teacher just like Carolyn and her husband Don, so they had a lot in common. Don and Carolyn would send him letters and boxes, never knowing what would actually make it through to Jaroslav. Over the years, Carolyn made dozens of audio tapes and taught Jaroslav how to speak English.

"It was our first experience with Communism," said Don. "We never knew what the censors would let through and what they would destroy or keep for themselves. And when he sent us boxes, it was obvious they had been unwrapped and rifled through, and then re-packaged. Sometimes tapes he sent us would be erased, totally blank!"

As a token of their friendship, Jaroslav decided to make a telescope for Carolyn. He labored for months making every piece of the telescope and optics by hand. Materials were scarce and expensive in post-war Eastern Europe, but Jaroslav was an excellent craftsman and with the materials he could scrounge together he pieced together a beautiful little Maksutov.

"He knew if he shipped the telescope whole it would never make it out of the country", Don explained. "So he dis-assembled the whole thing, numbered all the pieces, and started shipping it to us in boxes, a few parts at a time. It was pretty amazing, even the screws were all different. It's not like he had a box of screws all the same size laying around."

Piece by piece the telescope parts arrived at the Hurless' house in the mail, until finally after months and months of shipments the last box of parts arrived and Don was able to assemble the whole telescope. It looks like a toy, but it has very good optics and is a real working instrument. But more than that, it is a work of art and a labor of love.

After Carolyn's tragic death in 1987, Janet Mattei went to visit Don in Lima, and collected the books, notes, and telescopes that Carolyn had willed to the AAVSO. Somehow, the Kruta Mak got left behind. A few years later, Don was preparing to go to an AAVSO meeting to give a paper called '3434 Hurless'.

"It was a great little paper written by a professional astronomer friend of Carolyn's about what it would be like on the asteroid named after Carolyn." Don continued, "I remember one part about how you could throw a baseball in one direction real hard and it would go all the way around the asteroid and come back to you from the other direction. I read it out loud, and the AAVSO people were laughing and taking notes- it was a big hit. Anyway, before I left I remembered the little telescope in the basement and I decided since I was going to the meeting I might as well take it with me. So that's how it finally made it to AAVSO headquarters years after Carolyn was gone." 

Jaroslav came to Lima once in the 90's to visit Carolyn's grave and visit Don. "He was pretty old back then, so I guess he's gone now, too", said Don, when I called him on the phone the other day to fact-check this story. (Jaroslav also visited Cambridge to attend the AAVSO 75th Anniversary Meeting in 1986 and, with his daughter, the 1987 Annual Meeting, but that's another story.)

The plexiglass case covering the telescope was a labor of love, too. After the telescope arrived at the AAVSO - to be kept there, not to be loaned off-site - Paul Sventek (SVN) of Houston, TX, who was a longtime, good friend of Carolyn's, offered to have a plexiglass case made to protect the telescope from dust, etc.  In due time a large carton arrived at Headquarters, unfortunately showing considerable damage. Inside was a beautiful custom-made cover, shattered. Generously, Paul had a second cover made, and fortunately this one arrived in perfect condition. It fits the telescope to a T!

The next time you visit headquarters you'll see the telescope sitting under its transparent cover on top of some file cabinets, behind the receptionist's desk. Now you know the tale of why it was made, who made it, how it was smuggled out from behind the Iron Curtain, and how it ended up "under glass" in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in the 21st century. 

My sincere thanks to Don Hurless, who it has been my immense pleasure to get to know and without whom this story would be missing the best parts.

Don Hurless at home in 2011

Read Carolyn Hurless biography

Carolyn Hurless

Carolyn Hurless 1934-1987
From the AAVSO archives

Carolyn J. Hurless was the most active and prolific female observer in the history of the AAVSO, with a total of 78,876 observations in the International Database. But that only scratches the surface of this remarkable woman’s life and career as an AAVSO observer, councilor, officer, mentor and ambassador.

Born in Lima, Ohio, November 24, 1934, Carolyn became interested in astronomy at the age of 13 through her love of science fiction. As a young woman, she was invited to join the Lima Astronomy Club, when President Herbert Speer found her name on the borrowers cards of people who had checked out astronomy books from the public library. 

Shortly after that, she decided to make her own 8-inch reflector with the guidance of fellow astronomy club members. When the initial grinding was done, Carolyn found that in her excitement she had hogged out a short focus mirror of f/4, instead of the typical f/8 or f/9 scope most were making at the time. In the end it turned out to be a fine instrument. In fact, the short tube length gave her, as she described it, a “feminine” telescope, easily transported and set up for observing. Most of her observations were made with this telescope and she never felt the need to upgrade to something else.

Legendary Gathering- Ed Oravec, Roger Kolman, Leslie Peltier, Carolyn Hurless, Tom Cragg, Curtis Andersen, Clint Ford in front of Peltier's Merry-Go-Round Observatory, Delphos, Ohio 1964. Courtesy: Roger Kolman

Carolyn learned variable star observing from legendary AAVSO observer and fellow Ohioan, Leslie Peltier. During a visit to her home in 2011, Don Hurless, Carolyn's husband, showed me how Carolyn learned the sky and location of the variables in her program. She had marked an X and circled the area around each one in her copy of Norton's Star Atlas. She memorized the star fields and eventually all the comparison star magnitudes, so that after a few years she didn't need to use variable star charts any more. In this way, she could whip the telescope around from one field to another quickly, and her annual totals climbed.

Carolyn would make the trip to Delphos, Ohio, a few miles away, to observe faint “inner sanctum” stars with Peltier’s 12-inch refractor nearly every week during their lifelong friendship. She knew she was fortunate to have Leslie as a mentor and was more than happy to pay it forward by mentoring other newcomers and sharing her enthusiasm with other variable star observers around the world.


One way she managed to do that was by publishing the monthly newsletter Variable Views in which she shared ideas about astronomy, stories of variable stars and amateur astronomers and humorous notes about her own experiences. She started the newsletter at her own expense and published it for 22 consecutive years.

Carolyn and Roger Kolman jamming
into the wee hours

Carolyn and her husband, Don, invited variable star observers to summer gatherings at their home, where she was able to share her love of the stars and observing in person. These informal star parties, or "August Orgies", as they became known in AAVSO folklore, also included trips to Leslie Peltier's observatory and frequently ended in late night jam sessions with Don and Carolyn accompanying AAVSO member musicians, like Clint Ford.  



She managed to reach out and touch people across international boundaries also, in a time when this was not easy to do. She sponsored a Czechoslovakian observer, Jaroslav Kruta, to AAVSO membership. Through persistent correspondence, mainly tape recordings, she taught Jaroslav English, and was able to introduce several other AAVSO members to him by arranging for them to meet when they visited Czechoslovakia. Kruta was so grateful for the friendship he hand made a telescope for Carolyn as a sign of his gratitude. The remarkable story of that telescope can be found here.


Besides sharing her enthusiasm for astronomy with the public, she was a gifted musician who maintained a full-time position as a music teacher, inspiring countless young musicians through the years.

Carolyn at the Schoonover telescope Lima, OH
Courtesy: Roger Kolman

Her service to the AAVSO includes two years (1965-1967) as a councilor and six years as 2nd Vice President of the Council (1967-1973).


Her life ended tragically in 1987, when, after years of excruciating pain from an undiagnosed disease, she died of a self-inflicted gunshot to the head. She is survived by her husband Don, who has never remarried and lives in their home in Lima, Ohio, where he still teaches piano students daily.

Discovered in 1981 by Brian Skiff, the asteroid 3434 Hurless was named after Carolyn. Carolyn's name was suggested by Paul Sventek who provided the citation.

In 2011, the AAVSO successfully ran four pilot programs as a first step towards creating an online education center. We chose to honor Carolyn Hurless by naming this program after her, The Carolyn Hurless Online Institute for Continuing Education (CHOICE). CHOICE was officially launched in February 2012, and the AAVSO is proud to carry on in the tradition of this remarkable woman.