The Journal of Astronomical Data 2012, Volume 18 ABSTRACTS =============================================================== [JAD 18, 1] The Eagle and the Dove. A tribute to Hilmar Willi Duerbeck. C. Sterken This eulogy was written in memory of Hilmar W. Duerbeck, who died suddenly and unexpectedly on Thursday the 5th of January 2012, at the age of 63. This writing is not a classical obituary, but is a set of recollections about the most wonderful and very special person that Hilmar was, about his life, and about the way we have worked together. This document is based on archived letters, emails and memories of conversations and discussions, and also includes the personal webpage that he designed and maintained at the University of Brussels. ---------- [JAD 18, 2] Multiband photometry of CY Aquarii: the 2011 season C. Sterken, C. Wiedemair, T. Munaro, J. Rigo, J. Durnwalder, A. Kirchler, J. Damini Hofer, F. Schraffl, E. H. Olsen and T. Tuvikene Based on more than a dozen partial nights of filterless CCD photometry combined with Str\"omgren $uvby$ photomultiplier photometry, we derive 29 new times of maximum light of the SX Phoenicis star CY Aquarii. These times support a linear ephemeris for 2003-2011. In addition, we present $uvby$ light curves for this star. Our dataset displays the smallest residual spread compared to any other substantial dataset published during the last decade. ---------- [JAD 18, 3] Infrared extinction spectra of aerosols with relevance to planetary and lunar atmospheres I: Single-component aerosols Kerry J. Knox, E. Kathrin Lang and Ruth Signorell Mid-infrared extinction spectra (500 - 6000 cm-1) of a series of single-component aerosol particle ensembles representative of those found in a range of planetary and lunar atmospheres are presented. The aerosols were generated in the laboratory via condensation from the gas phase in a bath gas cooling cell, and the spectra recorded using a Fourier transform infrared spectrometer. This paper is the first in a series aimed towards building a spectral database for use in remote sensing of aerosols. The aerosol substances included here are methane, ethane, propane, butane, pentane, ethylene, acetylene, carbon dioxide, ammonia and sulfur dioxide. ---------- [JAD 18, 4] BOOK REVIEW: When the Scientist Presents. An Audio and Video Guide to Science Talks. C. Sterken and J.-L. Lebrun This book is a guide for the presenting scientist, written in the format of a "how-to" book that explains, in a simple and direct style, how a presenter can make his or her audience stay throughout a short or a long lecture. The book is full of advice, and explicitly lists a number of situations that any presenter should avoid. The book includes a companion DVD that illustrates the techniques that are explained in the text. In addition, the guide refers to numerous web sites with supplementary information. The book is divided in four parts: content selection, audience expectations, the slides proper, and the presenter. Each part includes several chapters. The first part deals with criteria of content selection and content filtering, and elucidates the differences between a written paper and an oral presentation. In particular, the need for transforming a long article into a short oral presentation is explained, as well as how to captivate the audience by filtering on novelty, and by organising the narrative along a story plot. The author teaches the speaker the importance of every slide, and of every element of the slide, viz., the title, the fonts, the colours and the line weights. Most importantly, the need for live rehearsals is repeatedly underlined. The second part handles audience expectations, and mentions the signals that are broadcasted when the contact with the audience gets broken: rush-through, slide disorganisation, fast talking and fast pacing. This chapter also warns for the consequences of "hijack", i.e., unsolicited and long interruptions by one or more participants that result in the above-mentioned detrimental effects that cause audience boredom. This part of the book also comprises many good tips on the learning of language. The third part concentrates on expectation building through slide design, and identifies five types of slides - viz., title, hook, map, story, and conclusion. Each type is illustrated by an example, and by a design guide in question/answer format that tells you how to (and how not to) design each type of slide. Slide design involves all aspects of legibility at a distance, i.e., it involves the interplay between document design (graphics, fonts, colours), environment (the lecture room and its lighting conditions) and technology (the projector or screen, but also the microphone and the pointing and presentation tools). Most important is the advice on how to make the hook slide, and what kind of slide not to show at the end of your presentation. The presentation software also receives ample attention: this part of the book includes many hints for enhancing PowerPoint (Windows) as well as Keynote (Apple) presentations in order to optimally capture and sustain audience attention. The last part deals with the presenter who, as a host, wants to deliver a great talk to the guests in the room. Attention is called to body language, attitude, self-generated anxiety, and voice. Most importantly, aspects of politeness - such as finishing the lecture within the allotted time, or the need for appropriate dressing - are also documented. In addition, the speaker as a scientist is also described, with a stance toward disclosure of intellectual property, and ethical questions related to intellectual honesty. Finally, the process of answering questions is covered in detail. The DVD with the audio and video examples is quite useful (for example, the map slide flash demonstrates handy tricks for navigation and for the creation of "secret" buttons), although some of the podcast content is less relevant. This book is meant for students, but also for their young and not so young supervisors. The book is very well typeset on good-quality glossy paper, and is a pleasure to handle. Unfortunately a couple of typos have crept in, and some repetitions create a mild deja-vu impression. The reality stories about poorly-performing presenter Vladimir Toldoff are somewhat irritating. The discussion of the relationship between height of letter and distance from eye to projection screen in chapter 6 is "to the point", but the mix of metric and non-metric units (for example "font size 10") sometimes leads to confusion. All in all, this book is very good value for the money. ---------- [JAD 18, 5] Two decades of optical photometry of short-period eclipsing RS CVn systems and other active chromosphere systems Paul A. Heckert I present BVRI photometry of short-period (P < 1d) eclipsing RS CVn binary star systems collected between 1988 and 2009 at Mount Laguna Observatory. Most of the data are for ER Vul and WY Cnc, with light curves nearly every year during that time period. I also present light curves for at least several years for XY UMa, BH Vir, CG Cyg, RT And, and UV Psc. I have fewer light curves for SV Cam, UV Leo, 1E1919+0427, and GSC 2038-0293. In addition to the eclipsing short-period systems, I also include UBVRI data for two longer period noneclipsing RS CVn binary systems: UZ Lib and DM UMa, as well as two active chromosphere single stars: FK Com and HD 199178. ---------- [JAD 18, 6] BOOK REVIEW: Chemistry in Theatre. Insufficiency, Phallacy or Both. C. Sterken and Carl Djerassi This book deals with the question of what role a play, or the theatre, can fulfill as an educational or pedagogic tool in the broad scope of science learning and education. The book contains the texts of two of the author's recent plays, viz. Insufficiency and Phallacy. Carl Djerassi is a writer and an emeritus professor of chemistry at Stanford University. He has published short stories, poetry, some novels and several "science-in-theatre" plays. Almost one fifth of this slim booklet is occupied by Djerassi's preface that is, in its own right, a most useful essay worth reading by any student of the exact sciences. Djerassi's point is that most of the modern science plays have a didactic component, and aim to illustrate - through the medium of theatre - what science or scientists are all about. To make such plays available to a broad audience, he advocates the production of readable books written in play format. The strong point of such plays is the dialogue format - as was already very well known by forerunners like Galileo Galilei with his Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, published in 1632. Djerassi does not tell what his characters do, but he emphasises how and why they do some specific thing. Insufficiency is about the chemistry of champagne bubbles (coined bubbleology, i.e., the science of champagne or beer bubbles), in a scientific academic context dealing with tenure and fashion. The story clearly shows how the life of a young tenure-seeking scientist develops under the strong interlock of forced - but also of voluntary - overwork that leads to tenure (in turn accompanied by an increase in material security). But it also mentions the self-imposed and seemingly unescapable treadmill of success and scientific achievement that comes with tenure. The play also deals with fashion in science via the simplistically coined term bubbleology, and the author shows that the actual implications of this "science" actually even reach to cosmology. The dialogues in this play also point to the problem of untenured lecturers that are tough graders in a culture of student grade inflation and anonymous student evaluations. The discussion also reflects on the system of peer reviewers and referees on evaluation committees. Phallacy deals with the similarities and differences between science and art, and connects both. The play poses the question that comes up after the discovery that a bronze statue that was considered since long to be a Roman original, suddenly is demonstrated to be a Renaissance cast: does that discovery change the value of the artwork? The play furthermore illustrates how scientists fall in love with their own pet theories, and defend their favourite hypotheses against new evidence. The essay has very good and sharp dialogues about citing and not citing each other, and about the problem of the perception of discussion and counterarguments as personal affronts. The play vividly touches on the concept of scientific "truth" and illustrates this in a playful way, along with concepts as the scientist's life-work, fraud, proof, and credit, and even the question for priority and credit via the unwritten rules about the order of author names on a paper. The science plays in this book are intended for reading rather than for performance on the stage. The booklet is very enjoyable reading, and offers pleasant plots that lead to unexpected outcomes - although not of the "happy end" type. The book deals with how scientists work, with the excitement and drama of scientific discovery, with the tribal nature of scientist's behaviour in the typical atmosphere of a run-of-the-mill laboratory or university department, and even includes aspects of scientific writing. The underlying morale is that first-class science and crookedness by some of its practitioners are not necessary incompatible. The short digressions about quality of a scientific work (i.e., something inherent to the work itself), the value of a scientific work and of a scientist (that refers to how the research and the researcher are evaluated, and how the result of this assessment is perceived by the society) and on scientific truth (i.e., coherence in facts, ideas and theories, knowledge that passed the test of verification and, last but not least, truth in the communication of results, are a substantial bonus to the reader. I vividly recommend this book to all students of the exact sciences, but also to their supervisors, who can use these fictional characters and research activities to discuss the moral principles that underlie the lifelong job of scientist. The paperback version of this work is quite affordable, the e-book price is exuberant. ---------- [JAD 18, 7] BOOK REVIEW: European Perceptions of Terra Australis C. Sterken, A. M. Scott, A. Hiatt, C. McIlroy and C. Wortham Terra Australis - the southern land - has been one of the most widespread concepts in European geography from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century. This book comprises a set of 14 interdisciplinary scholarly contributions that deal with personal perceptions of Terra Australis by cartographers and explorers, and with putting these perceptions in their historical and cultural environments. This book seems, at a first glance, to be very remote from astronomy - and even from the history of astronomy - however, as it also offers an excellent background to Captain James Cook's second voyage to observe the 1769 transit of Venus from Tahiti, it definitely is a work of truly interdisciplinary character. Cook's voyages, in fact, became a model in which key scientists of many nationalities and disciplines traveled together on ships. In these voyages, art, science, technology and political power were centralised and united. The chapters range across history, the visual arts, literature, popular culture, technology, politics and science. Issues of scientific reasoning are raised in the description of how people did think about the south before there even existed a perception of the unknown land - quite comparable to how ancient and early-modern astronomers had their thought about cosmology even before any observational data were available. Several early map systems - like the zonal and T-O maps (medieval world maps with the letter T inside an O representing the lands inside a circle of oceans) - are described, and the description of Roman geography shows the amazing fact that theory and practice were not unified, and existed independently of each other insofar that a real paradox between theory and observation had persisted for a very long time. The maps and charts also exemplify the long-lasting consequences of early modern copy-paste practice: navigators copied original sketch charts of coasts that were previously unknown to them, herewith committing many translation and transposition errors and thus creating pidgin or even fake geographical appellations. The evidence presented in this work brings out many issues of cartographic authorship credit, exploratory competition and plagiarism, and even ghostwriting. The book is of interest, among others, to cultural historians, historians of science, historians of cartography, the visual arts, and to scholars in the history of slavery and post-colonial studies. The Editors of this Volume have done a fine job by arranging all references into one single bibliography list at the end of the book: as such, the reader has access to one alphabetical list of about 30 pages of sources and references. The book contains more than 50 figures, mostly zonal maps and charts, world maps, and also reproductions of painted landscapes and portraits. Regretfully, none of these illustrations is in colour, and the low-contrast greytone reproductions lack the necessary luster to fully appreciate the scientific and artistic content. Worse even, some graphics are extremely poor in terms of image resolution: for example, a full-page reproduction from a 15th-century morality play has been copied from the given website at a graphical resolution of 85 dpi only. This is in complete contradiction with the hardcover-with-sleeve product of that price level.