[Aavso-photometry] Image archiving...

[Bob Koff]

Bill,

I've been archiving all of my images, and keeping them indefinitely.  I 
am saving both raw and calibrated images, writing them to CD/DVD.  I try 
to remember to include the calibration frames on the CD's as well as the 
images.

Putting them on a CD or DVD means they don't take up much room to 
physically store, and the media is pretty cheap.  So it's practical to 
save everything, just in case it's needed later.

This was learned the hard way...

Regards,

Bob Koff
Antelope Hills Observatory

Bill Goff wrote:

> 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
>
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