TN 101: a work in progress -- comments welcome

[Michael Richmond <richmond@stupendous.cis.rit.edu>]

  I'm trying to put together a paper which will describe the
Mark IV measurements in a quantitative way and serve as a 
reference for future work.  This hypothetical paper may also
act to "advertise" the Mark IV data to the astronomical community
at large.  I am guessing that I'll try the Publications of the
Astronomical Society of the Pacific, when the time comes.

  The first step in this effort is to characterize the
Mark IV data in the Engineering Database which Michael Sallman
maintains.  Yes, it has warts, but if we can describe them
accurately, then some people will realize that it may still
meet their needs.

  The next step, which I plan to take in the next few weeks,
is to do some sort of post-processing of some (or all) of the
Mark IV database which, in one way or another, cleans it up.
The result will be one or two catalogs containing subsets
of information, I hope.  For example, a catalog of the
mean V,I magnitudes of some subset of stars which are
relatively constant -- perhaps with some systematic errors
removed or at least diminished.  I'm not really sure how far
I'll go in this extra step.

  Anyway, I figure that it will help me to put results out
for review by TASS readers as soon as I get them.  In this way,
if I do something stupid, you can tell me so that I can fix
the problem now (rather than after having submitted the paper).
Also, if you have suggestions for additional tests and plots
and so forth, I can perform them now so that we'll be ready
for any referee's requests.

  I've placed my initial results in Tech Note 101,

     http://stupendous.rit.edu/tass/technotes/tn0101.html

I plan to add to this note as I go, so that it will grow larger
and larger over the next few weeks.  It will serve in some ways
as a very rough draft of portions of the eventual paper.

  Comments and suggestions are of course most welcome.

                                               Michael Richmond