The GTN-AAVSO Blazar Program

The GLAST Telescope Network (GTN) is a collaboration among students, teachers, amateur astronomers, small college observatories, and professional astronomers who will obtain observations of base-line activity levels and follow-up observations for bright blazars, one of the key science objectives for NASA's Gamma-ray Large Area Space Telescope (GLAST) mission. A key partner in the GTN is the American Association of Variable Star Observers (AAVSO, a non-profit international scientific and educational organization that has considerable experience with handling, processing, and displaying large amounts of data and with coordinating observers from every corner of the globe.

The GTN-AAVSO blazar program will recommend observing sequences, and provide advice and mentoring for observing techniques and data reduction. The program will archive magnitude estimates using the AAVSO database system and lightcurve generator, as well as CCD images of blazar fields. The program will also employ the online image archiving system developed by the GTN. Images of blazar fields will be available for subsequent analysis by contributors to the program, and by the GLAST science team for mission planning and follow-up studies.

We will present examples of the AAVSO lightcurve generator, examples of the GTN image archive system, plus examples of the data we are currently accumulating. The GTN-AAVSO collaboration is partially funded by the NASA's GLAST Education and Public Outreach Program.