Re: [Fwd: Re: re 23 59 12.0 +55 46 01]

[Doug Welch <welch@physics.mcmaster.ca>]

This is a worth undertaking. It would seem to be the case that it could
be done in a very complete way rather quickly, since the number of 
available bright stars is only on the order of 1000's and electronic
catalogues of them are easily available.

It would be possible to quantify a "maximum bleed" map for bright stars
of a given magnitude, too. Even the "zone of avoidance" for detecting
TASS entries around stars would be interesting to quantify, as Michael
has already started to do. Lots of straightforward results for anyone
willing to take a crack at it!

A related piece of work would be to quanitfy the average effect of
having brighter and fainter neighbors within a given number of resolving
elements.

In all of these cases, the fact that the FWHM is set by the optics is a
huge benefit in getting easily-understood and consistent results.

Cheer,
Doug

On Thu, 2005-02-03 at 07:37, Michael Sallman wrote:
> Thought I'd forward this on. I need to learn to hit "Reply All".
> 
> Mike
> 
> -------- Original Message --------
> Subject: Re: re 23 59 12.0 +55 46 01
> Date: Wed, 02 Feb 2005 21:13:27 -0600
> From: Michael Sallman <msallman@pro-ns.net>
> To: Stupendous Man <richmond@stupendous.cis.rit.edu>
> References: <200502022258.RAA12418@stupendous.cis.rit.edu>
> 
> Michael,
> 
> Stupendous Man wrote:
> 
> >   SOMEONE could perform a valuable service by doing a little
> > digging, finding more examples of bright stars and fainter
> > stars nearby, and putting together a table like this:
> > 
> >       For a star of magnitude           expect contamination within
> >       -------------------------        ------------------------------
> >                0                              30 arcmin
> >                1                              12 arcmin
> >                4                               3 arcmin
> >          ....                              .....
> >      
> > and so forth.
> > 
> >   Volunteers, anyone?  
> 
> As I am sitting on top of my database, as it were, I'll take a shot at it.
> 
> Some early results from exit polling (sorry, I have the State of the
> Union Address on in the background):
> 
> Star			Vmag		Contamination
> =====================================================
> 
> HD 124897 (Arcturus)	-0.40		No stars within .1 degree
> HD 34029  (Capella)	 0.08		No stars within .1 degree
> 
> I used the .1 degree radius to find a star to run your ensemble program
> against. I have increased the search radius to 1 degree. We'll see what
> I get.
> 
> >   I figure that it would take a day or so
> > for someone to work out a decent procedure, and then another
> > day to pick out 10 or 20 sample bright stars of a range
> > of magnitudes, and check the Mark IV measurements around them.
> > Well, maybe a couple of more days.  (Of course, since 1 day
> > of effort requires 10 calendar days, this could possibly
> > take a month or so of real time; less, perhaps, for someone
> > who can write scripts to access a database fluently....)
> 
> Well, it looks like I'm ahead of schedule so far. :-)
> 
> Mike