Re: TASS Discovers 13 "new" objects, maybe?

[hjohnson@pluto.njcc.com (Herbert R Johnson)]

On Wed, 20 May 1998 04:37:51 +0000, Chris Albertson <chrisja@jps.net> wrote:
*>I wrote the following in real-time while playing with a newly built
*>"test" database.  It contains <1% of the TASS MkIII data.  My intent was just
*>to see if the software worked and as a practical test to see if the tools
*>would support random ad-hoc analysis.  In the process I may have found
*>something of interest.  I post my notes to show (1) the thing I found and (2) to
*>show by example what kind of "make it up as you go" analysis can be done.
*>I've said it before - you can do this kind of stuff remotely from the comfort
*>of your own PC. give it a try.

I tried reading your report instead. I've privately sent you more detailed
comments, but the bottom line is I can't read your results without a
hand calculator and ephemeris. The RA and dec in the observation
reports require a factor of 36 and a bunch of zeros; the Julian date
of 6 and several digits is off by some other factor (Jan 0 1999 is 2450813.5
for reference, these obs are probably not a year old). I simply cannot
thoughtfully consider your findings without some clue as to date and time.

I know this is a casual demonstration of the database, but I am
not encouraged by it, to say the least. This kind of stuff - cryptic
results from large databases - bugs me personally, so I won't say
more publically otherwise. I can say I'm glad to see that a "test database",
something I've advocated for some time, is apparently around in
some form. Hope it is online for the rest of us.

Herb Johnson

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