John O'Neill mentioned this before in the Variable Star forum but having just read through some of the materials I think its worth posting about it again.

Variable Star Astronomy, formerly published as Hands-On Astrophysics, was developed for anyone who is interested in astronomy and in learning more about the behaviors and properties of stars. The conversion of the curriculum to electronic format has been completed for the Student Manual and the Teacher Pages. Conversion of the supporting VSTAR software is in progress. The AAVSO, with support from the Chandra X-Ray Center, is delighted to make this rich educational content available to you, free-of-charge

I prefer the old name

www.aavso.org/education/vsa/

It will be of particular interest to any of you doing outreach work or extra curricular work with second level schools.

Cheers,
~Al

Hi Al,

I too was fond of the old name, but the AAVSO felt Astrophysics can be a bit intimidating to beginners.

I had the original package (manual, photographic slides). I gave a loan of it to somebody (I won't name them) but never got it back!

It's an excellent course and more advanced people will also find parts (in the later chapters) useful and interesting,

John