New from AIP4Win... and some stars too

From: Joe Patterson <*jop_at_astro.columbia.edu*> Date: Fri, 02 Apr 2010 10:12:06 -0500 · jop_at_astro.columbia.edu

Dear CBAers,

I think about half of you are using Richard Berry's AIP4Win software. 
It's probably the quickest way to go from unwrapping the camera to 
scientifically useful data... so some of you might want to look at it.
It comes with their fine book "Astronomical Image Processing"... and I'm 
sure is available free-standing too.  Anyway, he has a "CBA data format" 
option in the software, which makes ol' spreadsheet-phobic me happy - 
and now includes airmass as well, which will make it possible to remove 
differential extinction to first order.  That will give us access to an 
awkward period regime - from 0.3 to 2.0 days.

Here's his message. BTW some of you might want to attend the NEAIC/NEAF 
meeting in 2 weeks.  I'll be there Sunday, though not Saturday.  The 
talks are OK but nothing great... but the vendor booths, now they're 
just wonderful!  Better than Riverside, Stellafane, ASP, SAS, or 
anything I've ever seen.  It's like the astronomer's version of the Las 
Vegas consumer electronics show, ot the Tucson gem show.

All your coverage of MU Cam and BG CMi have cinched the cycle count; 
these stars can be retired for the season.  The only remaining guy on 
that particular menu is WX Pyx, which can use 2-3 more runs.  Then I'd 
like to commend some HARD (faint) targets:

OT 1112-35 (11 12 17.4 -35 38 28.8 2000.0)
SDSS 1238-03 ("Vir" in Downes cat)
SDSS 0813+28
SDSS 0804+51
SDSS 0751+14

These are high-risk (cuz they're faint), high-reward stars.  Some may be 
around 19th mag or even 20.  If the time overhead for acquiring a 
snapshot magnitude is not too much, snapshot magnitudes are plenty 
valuable.  And if you don't feel too strange in acquiring a time series 
on a star you can barely detect, that would be great too.

More on the brighter stars later today.  AM CVn remains a very, very 
good target - and of happy day, transiting near local midnight.  In the 
south, it's time to start up again on EX Hya (easy target), and to get 
acquainted with LY Hya (hard target),

joe

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: 	Re: AIP4WIN's CBA Report format...
Date: 	Thu, 01 Apr 2010 19:59:39 -0700
From: 	Richard Berry <rberry@wvi.com>
To: 	Joe Patterson <jop@astro.columbia.edu>
CC: 	Tom Krajci <tom_krajci@tularosa.net>, Russ Garrett
<russ@russgarrett.com>

Hi Joe /et al./--

The most recent AIP4Win (beta) includes the airmass and additional
material in the header. The next release (i.e., the working draft I have
on my computer) has coordinates for V, C1, and C2 in the header.

I'll be speaking at NEAIC/NEAF two weeks from now. The NEAIC theme this
year -- by popular demand -- is "doing science with CCD cameras." Even
though most people are still doing pretty pictures, there's a growing
number who want to do something more substantial.

--Richard

Joe Patterson wrote:
> Hi Richard et al.,
>
> Yes, that's great.  Tom's comment says it all: the airmass is 
> definitely useful - occasionally for the science, and *always* as a 
> monitor for when the observer's pushing things too far, falls asleep, 
> etc.  A little header information is good too - comp star coordinates, 
> maybe USNO number, nominal V, etc.
>
> Richard, thanks so much for doing this!  It'll really streamline the 
> path for new observers.
>
> Russ, sorry for my sluggishness. A stream of visits from 
> in-laws/relatives.  One of the several penalties for living in NYC. 
> I've exhausted my annual quota of museums and restaurants.  Just 1.5 
> more days, hallelujah.
>
> joe
>
>
> Tom Krajci wrote:
>> Hi Richard,
>>
>> I like having the air mass option for CBA reports.  For some projects 
>> Joe needs better data calibration to tease out faint periodic 
>> signals, especially in the frequency regime of 2 - 5 cycles/day.  Air 
>> mass info helps improve the calibration.  (I'm also looking forward 
>> to seeing air mass info with Russ' photometry because he's using a 
>> blue-block filter that helps reduce the effect of differential 
>> extinction that can be a real problem in long time-series work.  This 
>> may be a useful 'middle ground' between unfiltered and a typical 
>> photometric bandpass of about 300nm.)
>>
>> Anyway, it's easier to delete air mass info if you include it...than 
>> try and add it later.
>>
>> One final thought - would it be possible to include in the 
>> output/header some info on the comp stars?..mostly the name/coords.  
>> That can help when combining data sets from different 
>> observers...it's just good record keeping.
>>
>> Tom