Ninety one attendees returned to the Northwoods Resort for the first SAS Symposium. No workshops were given this year. Instead, we had a plethora of pros soliciting observations from the amateurs. It was almost embarrassing seeing these gentlemen of the evening standing around with their red lights, whistling and yelling out: “Hey Sailor!” Ok, it wasn’t that bad, but we sure had a bunch of professional astronomers give talks requesting amateur astronomers to join their programs. Lance Benner talked about the need for lightcurves to support their radar observations and Tim Castellano gave a talk on their new transitsearch.org program, which searches for extrasolar planets. Dale Mais spoke on his collaboration observing Mira Variable Stars while Aaron Price of the AAVSO talked about the need for observers and data analysts. Arne Hendon gave a talk on mining data from the professional surveys while the Bad Astronomer; Phil Plait made a pitch for observations supporting the GLAST program. Gene Lucas and David Dunham gave talks requesting observations of asteroids occultations. Finally, Alan Harris gave the Keynote speech on amateur contributions to asteroid science. What is an amateur to do? So many requests, so few nights.
The complete Proceedings are available.
Richard Kowalski: The A.L.P.O Near Earth Object Photometry and Shape Modeling Program
Arne Hendon: Surveys Are Your Friends
John E. Hoot: Uncool: Photometry and Astrometry with Modified Web Cameras and Uncooled Imagers
Bob Denny: Dispatch Scheduling of Automated Telescopes
Jurgen Wolf: The Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy
Tim Castellano: www.transitsearch.org: A Status Report
Thomas G. Kaye: Radial Velocity Detection of Extrasolar Planets
Dale Mais, Robert Stencel, David Richards: Mira Variable Stars: Spectroscopic and Photometric Monitoring of this broad class of Long Term Variable and Highly Evolved Stars-II
Donna L. Young: NASA’s High Energy Vision: Chandra and the X-Ray Universe
Gene Lucas: Modern Asteroid Occultation Observing Methods
David Dunham: Asteroidal Occultation Results
Aaron Price: Blurring the Line: Non-Professionals as Observers & Data Analysts
Philip Plait: Pro-Am Collaborations: The Global (nee GLAST) Telescopes Network
John Hoot: Data Acquisition and Reduction Methods for Slitless Spectroscopy
Bob Buchheim: Lessons from Bohemia
Robert Crawford and Mark Trueblood: Statistical Properties of a Two-Stage Procedure for Creating Sky Flats
Brian Warner: Looking Forward in the Rearview Mirror
James McGaha: NEOCP Past – Present – Future
Lance Benner: Contributions by Amateur Astronomers to Support Radar Imaging of Near-Earth Asteroids
Alan Harris: Amateur Involvement in Asteroid Lightcurves