For this year's Symposium, the Western Wing of the IAPPP moved back to its 'home' of Big Bear Lake, California, where it started 19 years ago. This was an exciting time as we were trying many new things; a new location, and a new format.
For the location, we went to the recently built Northwoods Resort in downtown Big Bear Lake. This luxurious resort had all the best amenities, and provided clear skies for the Thursday Night remote CCD Demonstration from the Bisque Brother's room.
For the format change, we instituted a Photometry Workshop for the Wednesday afternoon session. The purpose of the workshop was to give presentations that took both beginners and active photometrists through a comprehensive review of CCDs, imaging techniques and data reduction. It intended to provide the workshop participant with the skill and understanding to be able to provide quality astronomical measurements.
A record number of attendees (107) came to the fabulous Big Bear skies to enjoy the mountains and learn from the talks. The Photometry Workshop was a smashing success. Even though we ran over a bit into the dinner hour, the audience was objecting when Arne Henden tried to cut his talk short.
The General Session was full of interesting talks, including one by Wayne Brown who amazed the audience when he showed a $70,000 8k by 4k chip.
The Symposium was sponsored by Apogee, Meade Instruments, Santa Barbara Instruments, Sky and Telescope Magazine, and Software Bisque who were all there to demonstrate their products. Also setting up Vendor Displays were ScopeCraft, Astroworks, and Cyanogen. Proceedings were not published, but a PDF file containing many of the talks given can be found here. The Program was as follows:
Doug Hall: History and Overview of Photometry
Scott Teare: CCDs For Photometry
Doug George: Statistics and their Role in CCD Imaging and Photometry
John Hoot: Filters in Photometry
Barrett Duff: Evaluating Photometry Data Quality
Lee Snyder: Variable Star Photometry
Arne Henden: Creating Photometric Sequences
Scott Teare: Photometric Tutorial
Doug Hall: Potential Photometry Projects
Gary Frey: Asteroid Photometry from North Pines Observatory
Wayne Brown: Performance Characteristics of CCD Cameras
Lew Cook: XTE1118+480 and the Internet
Richard Berry: PHOTOMET: Software for Reducing Serial Photometry
Doug George: A Comparison of Various CCD Sensors
Jack Newton: New Advancements in Color CCD Imaging at the Florida Imaging Center
Scott Teare: High Resolution Planetary Imaging - Selective Image Reconstruction of Mercury
Bob Denny : Software Development For Imaging and Photometry
Dave Kenyon : An Introduction to Amateur Spectroscopy