new observers

The 10-Star Training Tutorials are designed for novices who have no prior experience observing variable stars. It is a walk through of how to find the star, how to make an estimate and how to submit the estimate to the AAVSO. If you are new to the AAVSO then these are great tutorials to get you started.

JD Calculator

What is Julian Date?
Compute the JD or UT yourself

To convert from JD to calendar date enter the Julian Date below:

Thanks to volunteer Rani Ahmed, the 10-Star Training Tutorial is now available in Arabic!

We hope that new observers will find this tutorial very useful for learning how to make their first variable star estimates. Since no prior experience is required, the 10-Star Training Tutorials are also ideal for use in schools and clubs.

In addition to the English and Arabic versions, the 10-Star Training Tutorial is available in Polish, Turkish, and Chinese. There is also a Southern Hemisphere version available in English, Spanish, and Portuguese.

Complete Manual - 2013 edition
Handbuch zur Beobachtung von veränderlichen Sternen (6.1 MB)

I am very pleased to announce that we now have TWO Chinese translations of the AAVSO Manual for Visual Observing of Variable Stars available for downloading. The newest addition to our collection of Manual translations is in "Traditional Chinese" which is used in Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan and parts of southeast Asia. This beautiful translation was done by Tao Fan-Lin (陶蕃麟) who is the Director of the Taipei Association of Astronomy Now.

You can get both versions of the Chinese Manual here: