[Aavso-photometry] Image archiving...

[Neil Butterworth]

I do as well.
I zip the night's images, which includes all calibration
files, and a text file with all the nights happenings,
like weather, clock problems, if any, camera temp,
objects observed and exposure times, etc.
and save the file with the date. For example, last nights
file is 21Aug05.zip.
I save them on CD.

Neil B

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Shawn Dvorak" <sdvorak at rollinghillsobs.org>
To: "Bob Koff" <bob at antelopehillsobservatory.org>
Cc: <aavso-photometry at mira.aavso.org>
Sent: Monday, August 22, 2005 9:14 AM
Subject: Re: [Aavso-photometry] Image archiving...


> I, too, keep the original and calibrated images, as well as the 
> calibration frames (flats & darks), on CD-Rs.  I occasionally compress 
> the images using hcompress if I have a lot of data for a given night - 
> it's a hassle splitting a night's data across two CDs.  I'm up to 220 
> CDs of data, including lots of old data from a CB245 that I rarely refer 
> to (but wouldn't dream of discarding).  I actually make two copies, with 
> one going offsite to work and one staying at home.
> 
> Lately, though, I've been thinking about using a mirrored pair of large 
> ATA or SATA drives, and only make a single CD copy that will go 
> offsite.  Mirroring the drives will ensure that a disk failure won't 
> require tedious reloading of data, and even a 250 GB drive will provide 
> enough space to accommodate all my existing data as well as another few 
> years' worth.  I use Linux for my main workstation, and will probably 
> put squashfs file systems on disk, which will provide compressed, 
> read-only storage.
> 
> Shawn
> 
> Bob Koff wrote:
> 
>> 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
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>>
>>> Aavso-photometry mailing list
>>> Aavso-photometry at mira.aavso.org
>>> http://www.aavso.org/mailman/listinfo/aavso-photometry
>>>
>>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>>
>> Aavso-photometry mailing list
>> Aavso-photometry at mira.aavso.org
>> http://www.aavso.org/mailman/listinfo/aavso-photometry
>>
> 
> _______________________________________________
> 
> Aavso-photometry mailing list
> Aavso-photometry at mira.aavso.org
> http://www.aavso.org/mailman/listinfo/aavso-photometry
>