Re: IBVS

[Tom Droege <tdroege2@earthlink.net>]

To make it perfectly clear, tass has no goals.  Tass is not an organization 
with goals.  I do not even consider it an organization, but we are 
incorporated as a research operation.  Individuals in tass can have 
goals.  You are free to align yourselves in groups to do specific things.

My goal is to have fun in retirement by doing something that is worth doing.

I have been working very hard to collect as much good data as possible at 
+7 N.  I now have enough that it is worth a paper.

It is my present intention to write an "engineering run paper" with one 
other major worker.  I gave this some soul searching, then decided that 
there was one other who had done a significant amount of work and that we 
should write the first real Mark IV paper.  But I am not even fixed in 
this.  I will do what works, and what seems fair to all that are involved.

We could also write the engineering paper with the current set of hard 
workers.  This set changes from time to time.  We do need to get the paper 
out, or ASAS and HAT and others will capture the authority as the 
experts.   We have been at this project about the same length of time, so 
we should make sure we get reasonable credit for our work.

But I don't care all that much about getting credit.  I would just be 
unhappy if others got greater credit for no better work.

To answer the science question.  I think now is the time.  We have a nice 
engineering run.  There are plenty of new variables in it.  It is unique 
data because of the simultaneous V, Ic measurements.

I stick with my proposal to start churning out ONs.  We should almost be 
able to automate the process.  OK a data base would make it unnecessary, 
but there is nothing like pages of thumbnails to show what is being 
found.  See the ASAS papers for examples.  I would like to put a little 
more detail in one place.  All the star designations for one thing, and the 
other known data where appropriate.

I hope that wiser heads than me will lead this debate.  Many of you know a 
lot more.  There are users like Brian Skiff who could give us direction 
here.  What say Brian?  What do we do with our data?

Tom Droege

At 03:51 PM 9/16/02 -0500, you wrote:
>Maybe I'm asking the obvious here but: what are the scientific goals of 
>TASS? So far the emphasis has been on the engineering. Would it be correct 
>to say the science goal was to make a large amount of data available for 
>people to find and study new variables? Or is a catalog of TASS variables 
>one of the goals? At one point do we start shifting the focus from 
>engineering to science?
>
>Maybe I should stop trying to publish and we could work on one big paper 
>of new TASS variables? Some could include just TASS data and other could 
>include our follow-up observations?
>
>Just thinking out loud...
>
>Michael K.
>
>On Monday, September 16, 2002, at 01:21  PM, Tom Droege wrote:
>
>>We shall see if we "infest" the variable star community.
>>
>>OK, until we find a better home, I suggest that we make these efforts 
>>technical notes.  I suggest a new class ON for observational notes.  If 
>>someone has a better suggestion for a name I am open to it.
>>
>>My inclination is to generate a bunch of ON with what we have so far.  We 
>>can update them as we go.  They will not be complete curves, and most 
>>will not have a classification.  We can start with a simple search to 
>>bring up ON within some search radius.  I would name them by their 
>>position in some standard way.  I would prefer names like ON 234.567 +7.3492
>>
>>I note that no one else seems to be doing simultaneous V, Ic, though I 
>>think ASAS is planning on doing it.  Our data will have a unique feature.
>>
>>Once we get some minimum number, then we will become a resource that is 
>>searched along with everything else.  I figure that we tried to join the 
>>community.  If they won't have us, then that is OK, we can do it ourselves.
>>
>>For me, my natural inclination is to buck the establishment.
>>But I appreciate the value of standard ways of doing things.
>>Single locations for data, etc..  But this in encouraging me to do this 
>>on our own.  If someone asks "Why did you set up yet another data 
>>base?"  we will have the correspondence to tell them.