The Symposium, was held at the Northwoods Resort in Big Bear, California. This luxurious resort had all the best amenities, and provided clear skies for the Wednesday and Thursday Night remote CCD Demonstrations from the Hospitality room.
The Symposium was started on Wednesday morning in order to provide additional time for a Basics and Application of CCD Techniques. This whirlwind presentation was given by Committee Member Dave Kenyon and covered the basics of how CCD Cameras operate and how to get good information from them. Wednesday afternoon had more general papers devoted to photometry and related issues.
The Photometry Workshop was held on Thursday morning and again presented by Scott Teare. The purpose of the workshop was to give presentations that took both beginners and active photometrists through a comprehensive review 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. Materials from the two workshops were combined into a complete reference workbook which was given to all attendees. This workbook will be available in the future to those who could not attend.
Thursday afternoon was devoted to science projects accomplished by attendees. Since so many of them were related to minor planets, the session got renamed the Asteroids and Solar System Paper Session and was moderated by Alan Harris of JPL who presented a preview of a paper he was taking to the Asteroid III Conference in Piazzia Sicily. Various other papers related to rotational period determination of asteroids were given.
Ninety nine attendees came to the fabulous Big Bear skies to enjoy the mountains and learn from the talks.
The Symposium was sponsored by Apogee, Meade Instruments, Pocono Mountain Optics, Santa Barbara Instruments, Sky and Telescope Magazine, and Software Bisque. The poster papers can be found here. The program was as follows:
Photometry Workshop I - Basics and Application of CCD Techniques, Workshop Leader: Prof. Dave Kenyon, Sierra College
John Menke: Remote Astronomy in the New Century
Dale Mais: Amateur Astronomical Spectroscopy
Joe Patterson: The Center For Backyard Astrophysics
Scott Teare: A Low to Medium Resolution Near-Infrared Spectrometer
Charles Morris: The Challenges of Visual CCD Cometary Photometry
Richard Berry: Aperture Photometry — Looking Under the Hood and Kicking the Tires
Photometry Workshop II: Application of CCD Techniques and Data Reduction -- Workshop Leader: Dr. Scott Teare, New Mexico Institute of Technology
John Hoot: Photometry Using IRAF Software
Dr. Douglas Hall: Starspots - The Curious, Twisted Path of Discovery
Alan Harris: Recent Scientific Results Of Asteroid Lightcurve Observations
Brian Warner: Asteroid Lightcurves at the Palmer Divide Observatory
Robert Koff: Collaborative Lightcurve of Asteroid (391) Ingeborg
Douglas George and Bob Denny: ASCOM - Progress in Technology and Applications
Keynote Speaker - Dr. Joe Patterson: Variable Stars for the New Century