Eggen Card Database: Photometric Observations Spreadsheet Status

Affiliation
American Association of Variable Star Observers (AAVSO)
Tue, 08/29/2017 - 18:38

Version 3.5 of the Eggen Card Database spreadsheet Eggen Card Database: Photometric Observations is now online replacing version 3.4. The Reference document for this version has also replaced the 3.4 version. You can access these files by way of the "website" link in web page  https://www.aavso.org/searching-cards.  Questions and comments should be sent to jackcrast@gmail.com.

This update includes modifications to the Eggen-tasks "New Star Sheet" and "Create AID Records" and the removal of Eggen-task "Remove Unused Rows".

"New Star Sheet" now creates the "SIMBAD Name" hyperlink used in index sheets INDEX1 and STATISTICS automatically, eliminating the need for manual creation of the link.

"Create AID Records" has been modified to use arrays for star sheet I/O rather than the much slower use of the spreadsheet .getValue() and .setValue() instructions. This method was first used in the Eggen-task "Create WebObs Data" in a previous version. The modification was done to fix a performance problem which caused "Create AID Records" to abnormally end (ABEND) because the maximum execution time of 6 minutes was exceeded when a star sheet contained more than 20 photometric observations. The abnormally long run time was caused by the spreadsheet's compulsion to refresh related cells every time a .setValue() instruction was executed.

Finally task "Remove Unused Rows" was removed because its design was poor and its results were unpredictable at times. It will return in a future release.

Affiliation
American Association of Variable Star Observers (AAVSO)
Eggen observations added to AID and other activity during 2018

During 2018 98 stars contained 8,074 U,B,V,R, and I Band observations which were added to the AAVSO International Database. Any remaining remaining observations for these stars are either for photometric systems not supported by AID or contain problems that make the observations unreliable.

Validation of the transcribed data was done by 

1. Comparing the Eggen observations against the light curve generated from AID over the same date range as spanned by the Eggen observations. The VSTAR tool was especially helpful here.

2. Good old checking against the original data cards.

A PDF file containing a spreadsheet listing the stars processed can be found at https://drive.google.com/file/d/1onulVDqVv2H45Szem5WOmUNl3JiC908X/view?usp=sharing

Below the TOTAL line is a list of stars with the number of arguments at 0. This list is the list of confirmed AID members lacking observations for AID.  This is due to a total lack of observations or a lack of AID supported observations ( lacking Johnson UBV and Cousins RI band observations).