2010 IOTA Conference
IOTA Annual Meeting
December 3-5, 2010
AAVSO, Cambridge,
Massachusetts USA
Homer F. DaBoll
2010 Award
IOTA Annual Meeting
December 3-5, 2010
Boston area, Massachusetts USA
Background
• Concept of Award defined at the 2006 IOTA meeting
(Delaware):
To recognize significant contributions to
occultation science and to the work of the IOTA
• Name honors Homer F. DaBoll (1920 – 1990)
– Organizer of grazing occultation expeditions in
Midwest USA beginning in late 1960’s
– Suggested the name “International Occultation
Timing Association”
– Founding officer of IOTA 1975 (secretary/treasurer)
– First editor of Occultation Newsletter, from 1974
through 1990
• Previous awardees (2007) Dave Herald, (2008) Edwin
Goffin, (2009) Steve Preston
2010 Award Selection
• Nominations were solicited in early November
• Award committee formed from volunteers
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Dave Herald, ACT, Australia (recipient 2007 award)
Edwin Goffin, Belgium (recipient 2008 award)
Steve Preston, USA (recipient 2009 award)
Colin Haig, Ontario, Canada
Robert Buchheim, California, USA
Terrence Redding, Florida, USA (chairman)
• Award committee goals:
– select recipient of 2010 Homer DaBoll award
Eligibility (current)
Who is eligible for the
award?
• Anyone who has made
significant contribution to
occultation science or the
work of the IOTA
• Excluding sitting IOTA
officers & award
committee
• IOTA membership not
required
Who can make
Nominations?
• No defined restrictions at
this time
• “Call for Nominations”
made via Yahoo group
effectively restricts
nominators to active
occultation community
Deliberations
• Total of 9 nominations received, from 8
nominators
– All were excellent candidates
• All communication conducted by e-mail
– private to the committee
– independent of IOTA officers
• Approach was “discussion to reach a
consensus” (not “majority voting”), considering:
– Documentation provided with nominations
– Experience & personal knowledge of the candidate’s
contributions.
IOTA Mission and Goals
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MISSION STATEMENT
To encourage and facilitate the
observation of occultations and
eclipses
We provide predictions for grazing
occultations of stars by the Moon and
predictions for occultations of stars by
asteroids and planets
We also provide information on
observing equipment and
techniques, and we report to our
members about observations made
•
IOTA GOALS AND OBJECTIVES
•
To promote scientific research and
discovery using occultation related methods
To conduct research at the local, regional
and international level and to publish results
of studies in popular and scientific journals
To stimulate public awareness of
phenomena such as eclipses and
occultations
To improve lunar profile data through timing
of grazing and total occultations
To determine shapes and sizes of minor
planets and comets through timing of
occultations of stars by these objects
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2010 DaBoll Award Recipient
Hristo Pavlov
Hristo’s Astronomy Background
Hristo was born in a small town in central Bulgaria in Eastern Europe. He
watched the TV series Cosmos by Carl Sagan which started his interest in
Astronomy. A few years later the returning comet Halley made comets and
asteroids particularly fascinating to him. At the age of 14 Hristo moved to
another city to study Physics in a selective school.
His first computer program he wrote at the age of 10 and programming
became another major interest. He begun studying Physics at the university
but the difficult times and the poor prospects for getting a job as a scientist
at the time made Hristo decide to shift his career path into software
engineering.
In 2005 Hristo moved with his wife to Australia after being granted a skilled
migrant visa.
Hristo’s Astronomy Background,
cont.
A year later the views of the magnificent comet McNaught rekindled his
interest in astronomy. Hristo became a member of a local astronomy club
and this is how he met Dave Gault and later Dave Herald. He was
impressed by the drift scanning method for timing asteroid occultations used
by John Broughton. Dave Gault introduced him to video observations. He
has currently observed and timed more than two dozen asteroid
occultations.
Hristo discovered the difficulty in planning and staying informed with the
occultation predictions and in 2006 started writing software to help with this.
He presented OccultWatcher at the First Trans Tasman Symposium on
Occulations in Auckland, New Zealand where he also met David Dunham
and discussed the need of software for global coordination of occultation
observers. Gradually he added more features to OccultWatcher which
currently has more than 600 registered occultation observers all over the
world.
Hristo’s Astronomy Background,
cont.
In 2009 Hristo was able to observe the flyby of the near Earth asteroid 2009
DD45 using video. This is how he got interested in astrometry and video
astrometry in particular. He began working on his software for the reduction
of video observations – Tangra. The software can do both astrometry and
photometry directly from a video file and has been designed with the
intention to simplify the reduction process for both occultation light curves
and astrometry.
Hristo became an Australian citizens in 2008. He is currently building a
backyard observatory in Sydney which, while not yet finished, already has
an MPC observatory code obtained with a video camera, an 8” telescope
and reduction done with his software Tangra.
Hristo’s 2010 DaBoll Award
Acceptance Speech
To IOTA,
I would like to sincerely thank you for the honor of presenting me with this
year's Homer DaBoll Award! I would also like to apologize. A combination
of technical issues, the late time of the session and my demanding family (3
months old daughter and 23 months old son) prevented me from preparing
and responding more adequately during the online EVO session of the IOTA
meeting. Thanks to Dave Herald who recorded and sent me Terry's
presentation. I finally watched it yesterday. Someone on the record
said that I should probably prepare and present a speech before I am
allowed to have the award :) Well, fair enough. Let's start with a bit of a
history. Cont.
Hristo’s 2010 DaBoll Award
Acceptance Speech, cont.
After I moved to Australia and renewed my astronomical activity in 2006 I
met many people in IOTA, and in Australia in particular, that inspired me to
observe occultations, helped me to learn and treated me as a good friend. I
have to say that it really takes a special person to drive to a dark road in the
middle of nothing, setup a telescope, wait to record a few seconds event,
not observe anything interesting most of the time and still feel happy and
fulfilled. These are people like you, that have the desire to help the science
with their efforts and actually do science without being a scientist. This is
what inspired me most to start observing occultations and not for example to
start taking more pictures of M-42. Occultations however requires team
work and team work needs coordination. In 2007 I met David Dunham in
Auckland, New Zealand and we discussed some aspects of an automated
global occultation coordination software.
Cont.
Hristo’s 2010 DaBoll Award
Acceptance Speech, cont.
I had just presented the very first version of OccultWatcher (OW) at the First
Trans Tasman Symposium on Occultations and back then OW couldn't do
more than grabbing Steve Preston's events and showing you very basic
details of what is close to you and showing you when Steve has updated
some of his predictions. With time I kept adding new bits to OccultWatcher
to become what it currently is. Some people have told me that with
OccultWatcher I have revolutionized the way occultation observers plan and
coordinate their observations but to be honest from my point of view I have
just made my life easier which also turned out to make other people's life
easier as well. But I have to admit that I am glad that observers use
OccultWatcher and It makes me happy to see events in U.S. and Europe
with more than 10 stations in OccultWatcher. It is really good to see when
people go out, coordinate and most importantly observe.
Cont.
Hristo’s 2010 DaBoll Award
Acceptance Speech, cont.
I guess the other part of this story is also about the analysis of video
observations. I have to say that Kazuhisa Miyashita's LiMovie was also
something that impressed me along the way and I always thought it should
be very difficult and complicated to write something like it. Now that have
done it with Tangra I can tell you that I was not wrong. Writing a video light
measurement tool with automatic tracking is not an easy job. And I think you
can also tell this from your experience with LiMovie and Tangra because
their tracking doesn't always work the way you want it to. When I started
writing Tangra I wasn't absolutely sure that having a second light
measurement tool was a very good idea. I still don't know but I hope that
what I have added as 'improvements' will really be seen as improvements
one day. And if you ask me what is the biggest advantage of Tangra I will
say that this is the ability to see how the measuring apertures have been
positioned for every single measured datapoint in every measured frame.
Cont.
Hristo’s 2010 DaBoll Award
Acceptance Speech, cont.
And not only this but also the ability to send a much smaller .lc file to
someone else to evaluate your light curve. That's right, I may not be able to
guarantee that Tangra will do better tracking and better measurements than
other tools but I can really guarantee that if there is a bogus measurement
you can definitely identify it after the measurement looking at the .lc file in
Tangra. Some people have also asked me why the name "Tangra" and
others have even suggested I have named it after my favorite rock band. I
thought it may be curious to say where the name comes from. It is in fact the
name of the supreme god of the ancient Bulgarian tribes and this also
reveals my background - I was born in Bulgaria. Oh yes, and Tangra was the
god of the sky, of course.
Cont.
Hristo’s 2010 DaBoll Award
Acceptance Speech, cont.
And finally I should also say that I was a little surprised that the award was
given to me this year when I think that there are other more
experienced people that have been contributing for IOTA for a much longer
period of time than me. I hope in future years to see people being presented
with the Homer DaBoll award for observing, organizing observers and also
doing scientific research using occultations with the observations provided
by you - the observer, because in my opinion it is those people that have
helped most to advance the occultation science. One more time, thank you
so much for giving me this honor, I appreciate it very much! Now, can I
have my award please? Cheers, Hristo.
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Committee Thoughts
• Award Committee was effective
– Nominees considered against IOTA mission and goals
• Work of the 2010 awards committee was excellent
– While consensus was not sought, it was quickly achieved
• Cycle time was OK, but process should start earlier
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Call for nominations was made ~4 weeks before meeting
Deadline ~ 2 weeks before meeting
Provides ~5 days for deliberations – completed in five days
1 week for fab of award plaque – accomplished in 24 hours
• Items we didn't’t have to deal with, but which may
come up in the future:
– Should there be a limit to the number of individuals a single
person can nominate?
– How do we ensure other continent deserving individuals are
considered?
– Should we make an effort to recognize those who contributed
the most in the early years of IOTA?