[Aavso-photometry] Image archiving...

[Bill Goff]

I'm wondering what the habits are of folks on this list for archiving 
image frames.

1.  How long do you save your images, just till you've reported 
results, a year or more or forever?  It seems that as time goes on 
those older images would have less value.  I guess if I had images from 
a 5m+ scope that I waited a year for time on, I might feel differently, 
but I don't have that problem.  I've got some images from a cookbook 
camera that are several years old, can't image needing them...

2.  Do you save the raw images or just the calibrated ones?  I've found 
a couple of occasions where the calibration was incorrect and having 
the raw images saved the day.  I've also found that if I just wanted to 
perform a new reduction  such as including a new star, having to chase 
down old calibrate frames and recalibrate was a pain, having saved 
calibrated images was easier.

For now, I've started saving the calibrated images in addition to the 
raw.  That gives me a way to recalibrate if necessary and after some 
time (yet to be determined) dump the raw ones.  At one point the GTN 
people talked about image archiving on their machines, so I'd hate to 
dump something that someone else might have a use for someday, but I've 
not heard anything on this recently.

On the other hand, writing it all to CD or DVD's might be a solution, 
if they're important enough to keep.  Any one care to comment?

Bill