"Data mining" is a phrase used to describe the activity of performing research solely by using preexisting data. The American Association of Variable Star Observers (AAVSO) is an amateur astronomy research organization that participates in a wide variety of research, education and technology initiatives. This web site is meant to support the AAVSO membership and astronomers in general in their data mining activities.
There are three (3) primary areas that we seek to support:
- Educating people on data mining, data sources and the skills and technology necessary to work with it.
- Providing assistance to large-scale surveys in achieving their research goals.
- Doing research and writing papers.
In astronomy research, the advent of large-scale surveys has created petabytes of freely available astronomical data. The AAVSO has a long-baseline, comprehensive database of variable star observations dating back to 1894 and covering over 44,000 stars. In addition there are billions of observations available over the Internet in publicly available data sources. There are astronomical discoveries lurking in these databases, waiting for clever researchers to reveal them. We are those researchers. Join us!