[Aavso-photometry] Photometric Databases - User SDBs for TheSky6

[Greg Crawford]

A number of people have been asking for photometric databases for use in
TheSky6. The information that follows is relevant to those who want to import
photometric databases into TheSky. Access to the user databases for TheSky
requires membership of the Yahoo SoftBisqUsers group - 'cos that's where I put
the files! :-)

Previously I had converted Arne Henden's photometric data into a user SDB and
left it on one of my websites for download. However, as I learned more about
photometry from people like Arne and Brian Warner, I realised that this dataset
needed to be culled. Brian Warner has provided such a culled set of Arne's data
in the appendices of his soon to be released Second Edition of "A Practical
Guide to Lightcurve Photometry and Analysis". Brian has kindly provided me with
an electronic copy of those culled databases in two forms.

The first form is the traditional one with V magnitude and colour indices. The
second form gives magnitudes in B, V R and I, where they are available. This
second form is useful when using the new and simpler form of standardised
photometry which Brian explains in his forthcoming book.

Both datasets have been culled by Brian to include only data with >=3
observations and V Error <= 0.02 m.

With a little guidance from Tom Bisque, I have added headers to these text
files. So when you use the Data|Import facility in TheSky and click on Define
Headers, the fields should already be defined. PLEASE NOTE that there is a bug
in TheSky version 6.0.0.40 which results in the RA multiplier not being added
automatically in compilation from header text. Therefore, after clicking on
"Define Fields" you will need to further click on "Advanced" and manually insert
the RA multiplier for decimal RA, namely, 0.06666667. (Apparently this bug will
be fixed in a forthcoming HotFix).

One further note: in the header text I used Type 71 and Type 73. This
corresponds to User Defined Object Types 2 and 4 in TheSky6. If you go into
Display Explorer, burrow down to Reference Objects|User-defined Objects|Type 2
(and Type 4). You will need to turn these on in the Display Explorer and perhaps
choose customised symbols and fonts. You will also have to turn on these
particular SDBs in the Display Explorer and nominate what data you want
labelled.

I am not sure what Type 71 and Type 73 do to Object Type in TheSky5, so it may
be wiser to manually select object type in TheSky5.

The photometric user SDBs can be downloaded from the Files section of the Yahoo
SoftBisqUser group. Burrow down into Files|TheSky|SDBs and you will see two
zipped files with the names:

Henden_Data_CI.zip

Henden_Data_Mags.zip


I hope you enjoy the user SDBs and can use them for good photometry. My thanks
to Brian Warner and Tom Bisque for their assistance.

- Greg