Using the AAVSO International Database (Abstract)

Volume 38 number 2 (2010)

Arne A. Henden

Abstract

(Abstract only) The AAVSO International Database (AID) contains over eighteen million brightness estimates of thousands of variable stars, almost all made by amateur astronomers. We cover how these observations are submitted, the pipeline that all observations pass through, how observations can be retrieved from the database, and the basic tools for data visualization: the light curve generator and data download, VSX, and Seqplot. Many of the flags, such as validation, are described. Analysis tools such as VStar are covered. References regarding other photometric and imaging datasets are given.