The Trend in the Observation of Legacy Long Period Variable Stars (Poster abstract)

Volume 43 number 1 (2015)

Robert Dudley

5613 River Road, Arlington, VT 19046; greyowlvermont@live.com

Abstract

(Abstract only) A decrease in the number of observers of the Legacy Long Period Variable Stars has been noted by the AAVSO. Amongst the observing community there is the perception that observers collecting digital data are making up for this gap. Data from the annual Director’s report (2002–2013) and the AAVSO International Database (AID) for the years 1993, 2003, and 2013 were analyzed. For the period of 2002 to 2013 the total number of observers remained fairly constant (816 ± 97) with a large bump in 2011. The number of visual observations has slowly declined since 2007 though there has recently been an increase in the number of observations. From the AID data the number of observations reached a maximum in 2003 and has slowly declined afterwards. These trends as well as other information gleaned from the data will be present and discussed.