For this third year, 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 CCD Demonstrations from the court yard. The Full Moon did not disturb the Bisque’s any more than the copious amounts of alcohol consumed.
The Symposium was started on Wednesday morning with several presentations and solicitations for science projects you can do with your telescope. One of the most exciting was a presentation by Tim Castellano of the NASA Ames Research Center soliciting observations of nearby stars detect orbiting planets. A Software Workshop was held on Wednesday afternoon. It was very well received as the participants rotated amongst four software displays covering spectrography analysis, remote telescope control, photometry reduction, and planetarium software.
Thursday was devoted to science projects accomplished by attendees, software tools, and other subjects. Dirk Terrell, the Thursday night Keynote Speaker delivered an impassioned talk on interpreting the characteristics of eclipsing binary stars. With many questions, it went well into the evening.
Ninety four attendees came to the fabulous Big Bear skies to enjoy the mountains and learn from the talks. The Symposium was sponsored by Apogee, Santa Barbara Instruments, Sky and Telescope Magazine, and Software Bisque.
The complete Proceedings are available as a PDF file (8.5 meg). The Program was as follows:
Prof. David A. Kenyon: Science with your Telescope
Tim Castellano, Ph.D.,: The discovery of extrasolar planets by backyard astronomers
Brian D. Warner: The Whys and Hows of Asteroid Lightcurves
John E. Hoot: Wratten Filter Photometry
Robert B. Denny: Software Interoperation and Compatibility: ASCOM Update
Scott Teare: Synthesizing large telescope apertures: Adaptive optics and Interferometry
Peter Ceravolo: High Definition Optical Systems for CCD imaging
Doug George: CCD Mosaics
Russell M. Genet: Automatic Photometric Telescopes: Past and Future
Dale E. Mais: Amateur Spectroscopy: From Qualitative to Quantitative Analysis
John E. Hoot: Penetrating The Nucleus of Comets
LeRoy F. Snyder: Astronomy’s Embarrassment Of Distance Determination -
Small Telescope Science Will Calibrate an Accurate Determination Method
John L. Menke: A Neophyte's Determination of EY Ceph Curves and Orbital Constants
Colleen Gino: On-line Masters Degree in Astronomy
Cheryl L. Genet: Undergraduate Astronomical Research: Adventures in Photometry
Sean Hoss: New Telescope at an Old Observatory
Dr. Daniel A. Klinglesmith III: Stellar Classification with the SBIG Spectrograph
Edward Beshore: Photometry with TSCRIPT, a Scripting Application for Automating the Control of Telescopes and CCD Cameras
Robert D. Stephens: GSC 1839-78, a New W Ursae Majoris Variable
Prof. David A. Kenyon: An Observatory for Education and Science