The largest hourly gap, especially for T CRB is west of Hawaii to Europe. There are several Billion potential observers in places like Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong, China, Malaysia, Thailand, India, etc. Yet there are practically ZERO active observers submitting from these places, not even the most basic visual observations using binoculars, for instance. What can AAVSO do to recruit people from these areas? Offer free equipment?
Members of the Variable Star Observers League of Japan (VSOLJ) must be collecting observations of T CrB and much else. But I do not know how to access their data right offhand. Probably some observers in Australia also getting some observations. Various all-sky meteor camera arrays around the world surely must also be recording it. …of course there are probably vast numbers of webcams, security cameras etc aimed at the sky well enough to pick up the field. The fun part there would be to identify, access, and process the images!
\Brian
I guess what I am wondering is why AAVSO has such minimal presence in the Far East, such that separate organizations like VSOLJ do not interact even to the extent of sharing observations in their database? Of course there could be basic language issues at play over there. Maybe having Japanese and Chinese language AAVSO pages could break the ice?
If I were to speculate, language barrier is likely the first issue, followed by having a local advocate to promote this type of activity and facilitate data submission. In many countries where English is not the native language, we have surrogates who aggregate photometry and submit it on behalf of the users. For example, data were receive from the Hungarian Astronomical Association’s Variable Star section is submitted in this way.
If you consider this lack of geographic coverage to be a significant issue, you should consider watching the recent Meet the Candidates Webinar. One of our candidates, Prajaval Shastri resides in India.
In China, there are many astronomy enthusiasts, but most of us are more interested in photography of deep-sky objects, which is currently a primary reason. For example, in the case of SN 2023ixf, Chinese enthusiasts contributed the earliest and continuous observational data. However, subsequent observations by a large number of people were limited to photographing M101, with few engaging in photometry and uploading to AAVSO.
Secondly, most people are not familiar with the specific methods of CCD photometry and uploading. Additionally, language barriers are also significant (even though the browsers we use support automatic translation into languages like English), which has led to many AAVSO tutorials not being well-known to a certain extent.
Of course, visual and CCD observations of variable stars and other celestial bodies are relatively niche in China. Many people are aware of the existence of AAVSO but have not tried it themselves.
However, now many enthusiasts in China are showing interest in this area. Some amateur organizations (such as Xingming Observatory) have organized relay observations covering the entire country, focusing on T CrB…
I believe we will see more Chinese enthusiasts participating in AAVSO in the future.
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Clearly, the best country to participate in global coverage of a star such as T CRB would be Russia. It covers the largest swath of longitudes in the world, from Kamchatka to Europe. Yet there are practical Zero observers from Russia submit to the AID 
Second best would be China, followed by India. Do any of these 3 countries have a publicly accessible database where observations can be queried in real-time?
It is quite unfortunate, that for political issues, the best suitable countries for global coverage have poor relations with the USA, even though such issues should not affect scientific collaborations.
In China, as exemplified by the case I mentioned earlier, Xingming Observatory (hereinafter referred to as XMO) has organized an activity that has attracted numerous Chinese observers and foreign friends.
These observational data are publicly available, but for the convenience of measurement, XMO has developed a small program.
By simply storing the data in the corresponding folder, automatic photometry can be performed, and the photometry results are simultaneously published on the XMO official website (with a 20-minute delay for data confidentiality).
This activity has been ongoing for more than three months and is still in progress. The relevant information can be found in the link attached in the reply.
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