A Difference in Organization

[Tom Droege <tdroege2@earthlink.net>]

Tass is organized differently from operations like CBO,  SETI and 
AAVSO.  In those organizations, the intelligence is centralized.  Someone 
who runs things maps out a program and tells you how to do it.

Tass is an attempt to collect a group who have skills to do research, but 
who's background did not happen to include a PhD.  Well, we have lots of 
PhDs here anyway.  :^)  PhDs do not have a tight union.  If you do good 
work, no one will ask you for a union card to publish it.   There will be 
plenty of things to publish from the data already taken.

We don't tell you what to do.  No one runs things.  Some of us have a 
passion to get results from taking measurements of the sky.

Many people write me asking "what can I do?"  Sorry, that is the wrong 
question.

I understand that you have to learn to walk before you can run.  So how can 
you get started?  Having some passion about measuring things will 
help.  Try to do something.  Like running some data through Michael's 
pipeline.  You will quickly encounter problems if you look at the 
result.  Now you have something that you can ask questions about.  There 
are people here who can give you an answer for almost anything.  The prize 
is finding something for which no one has an answer.  Then searching it out 
and understanding it.  There are lots of examples in the tech notes of how 
experts look at data.  Start looking at data.  Really looking!  Try to find 
something wrong.  An example.  The program matches stars to a catalog.  How 
does the match error differ in the center of the image vs the 
corners?  What is the difference in error for images with clouds vs clear 
sky?  Someone that has been "bit" by error learns to ask such 
questions.  The few good people I am looking for like asking such 
questions.  It is fun for some of us.  Possibly you.

Do not hesitate to ask for data.  CDs are cheap.  I can generate a package 
of data if you ask.

Tom Droege