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

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

On Wed, 20 May 1998 13:06:39 -0700, Chris Albertson <chris@topdog.pas1.logicon.com> wrote:
*>I do agree with Herb that I did a real poor job of writing up the
*>result.  This was mostly intentional.  My goal was just to see if
*>the database software worked and by chance I blundered into something
*>unexpected.  The fact that the system allows one to "surf" the data
*>was the main message the found objects was secondary

OK. I got more excited about the findings than the workings of the database.
Maybe that's understandable given the title of the message which I took
literally to be a report on observations. I myself have an interest in unique
observations. In any case, Chris (and Tom) ultimately took my point,
which was that results meant to be read by humans should be human readable.
In fairness, it's an old arguement, "I can't read this, what does it MEAN?".

Tom says the user has to learn something to use the database, and that
"Herb did not like the format". Tom, I could not interpret the data as
presented: a Julian date of 6000000 does not exist. As for effort, I did
in fact go to the trouble of hand converting
the reported RA and dec, and they were consistent with Chris' other reference
to those values. The Julian date was opaque to conversion. (And who spoke
some time ago about hand-checking data...?)

I refuse to take any of this personally, I'm aware I
pushed hot buttons in being critical of a large body of programming.
Readable data is MY hot button, I've spent a lot of time trying to
interpret other people's data and asking annoying questions about it.
It's interesting how decisions about data formats that make sense today
look cryptic or foolish in retrospect years and decades later.
If TASS goes out of its way to make its work public and accessable,
is it not reasonable to suggest reported results be interpretable?
 
So excuse me for taking Chris *literally*: he found some objects, that was
the title of his email message. What are these? If he offers proper
Julian dates for
these observations, or better the calendar and clock conversions for them,
then ANYONE with a clue about the sky can follow up, without any SQL
database queries. If a followup is really desired. If not, not. End of debate.

Herb Johnson

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