From conny@ster.kuleuven.ac.be  Fri Jan 30 10:27:14 1998

Dear Committee members of the OHP Observatory,

being a frequent user of OHP's telescopes, I would like to address the
following. For astronomers who focuss on the study of variable stars with longer
periods of variability, it is of utmost importance to be able to obtain
observing runs that last several days/weeks. Moreover, the study of line-profile
variations, which offers the best diagnostic to determine the full pulsational
behaviour from wich we can derive basic stellar properties such as internal 
rotation, convective overshooting and from this stellar evolution, is only
possible with high-accuracy spectrographs. Very few of them are available. At
OHP, both Aurelie and Elodie fulfill these conditions and the stars under study
are usually sufficiently bright to obtain a good S/N within reasonable
integration times. The other telescope with these capabilities 
to which Europeans have access is ESO's CAT, which will soon be closed for
budgetary reasons. In this respect, the OHP telescopes and their equipment are
of a unique value to variable star observers, especially in the era where
the Hipparcos mission has resulted in an enormous amount of new variables.
It is therefore essential that these telescopes remain active since the 
largest telescopes will not be offered to perform studies on the variability of
bright stars. I believe that OHP can easily promote itself as being one of the
very few, if not the only, observatories where accurate instruments are
available and where long-term projects on bright stars are still very
welcome. 


Conny Aerts,
Postdoctoral Fellow of the Fund for Scientific Research, Flanders, Belgium.


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* Conny Aerts                           e-mail:conny@ster.kuleuven.ac.be *
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