March Meeting

LVAS Observer's Challenge and the Astronomical League's Variable Star Observing Program

The Las Vegas Astronomical Society's Observer's Challenge and the Astronomical League's Variable Star Observing Program - Two Incentives for the Amateur Astronomer

Oftentimes, the amateur astronomer needs a little motivation to go outside with binocular or telescope. Two observing programs, the Las Vegas Astronomical Society's Observer's Challenge and the   Astronomical League's Variable Star Observing Program offer such incentives. I will relate my own experiences with both and try to encourage members of the RI Skyscrapers to participate as well.

Glenn Chaple from Amateur Telescope Makers of Boston will present about Astronomical League's Variable Star Observing Program.

Glenn has been an avid amateur astronomer since the summer of 1963 when a high school friend showed him Saturn through his telescope. He received a BS degree in astronomy from UMass Amherst in 1969, and then worked for two years at the Alice G. Wallace Planetarium in Fitchburg, Mass while receiving a Master’s Degree in Science Education from Fitchburg State College. From 1974 until his retirement in 2007, he was a middle school science teacher – first in the Fitchburg school system, then at Groton-Dunstable . 

He co-authored, with Terence Dickinson and Vic Costanzo, the Edmund Mag 6 Star Atlas and wrote the books Exploring With a Telescope (Franklin Watts – 1988) and The Outer Planets (Greenwood Press - 2009). He contributed chapters on double stars to David Eicher’s Deep-sky Observing With Small Telescopes (Enslow Publishers – 1989) and James Muirden’s Sky Watchers Handbook (W.H. Freeman – 1993). Between 1977 and 1987, he wrote a column on double stars for Deep Sky Magazine. From 1982 until 1994, he handled the “What’s Up?” column for the children’s astronomy magazine Odyssey. Since 2002, he has authored the monthly “Observing Basics” column for Astronomy. 

Glenn has been a member of the Amateur Telescope makers of Boston since 1980, serving as President from 2015-2018. Also in 1980, he joined the American Association of Variable Star Observers (AAVSO) and has forwarded more than 80,000 variable star estimates to that organization. In 2006, he joined the Astronomical League and has participated in several of their observing programs.