September Data

[tom <tdroege2@earthlink.net>]

I know some of you sneer, but September is turning into a record month.  I 
have burned 300 CDs so far this month.  I keep wondering if there is a better 
way to archive data, but my research says that CDs are probably the best 
media for long term storage.

It is a royal pain since it takes several hours just sitting in front of CD 
burners each day.  It is a real pain since it the interval between changing 
CDs is not long enough to do much else and if I try I make mistakes.

So far I have taken data 19 out of the first 20 days in September.  This 
should make a nice sequence for testing things about the data.   All the data 
is not perfect.  Some stars, for example, grow halos at some periods in the 
night.  I think it is a question of ground fog and the like.  Still, when I 
exclude such frames from the data set, the scatter does not improve.  So 
there is something else going on that is there on clear nights.  

I am not saying fuzzy frames don't have larger errors, I am saying that the 
frames that look bad contribute less error from their badness than other 
hidden errors.  If we fix the other error, then possible excluding "bad" 
frames might make the data better, but not at present.

Tom Droege