[Aavso-photometry] Submission guidelines

[arne]

George Silvis wrote:
> When submitting observations to the WebObs, how many of one star on 
> the same night should I submit?  For instance, if I take 5 45s images 
> on one star then AIP is going to prepare a report with 5 entries. 
> Should I submit them all? Only the median? Average them? Stack the 
> images and generate one entry? Advice requested!
> 
The answer is as always: it depends.
In general, unless you know that high time resolution is
needed, I'd lean towards reporting a single combined measure,
and using the individual measures to gain a better understanding
of the error in the combined measure.  So for a Mira, taking
5x45s means your observation spans perhaps 5 minutes, and
you really don't expect any variation to occur in that window.
Even for a cataclysmic binary, 5 measures is not a time series,
so I'd still report one combined measurement.

If you are taking a time series that might be hours long on
an object known to have variation on second-to-minute timescales,
then you may want to report every measurement.

On the other hand, I'm also a realist.  If AIP spits out a number
for every frame, it takes extra effort to combine those numbers and
create another record to send to the AAVSO.  Don't cause extra
hardship for yourself, and don't delay submission just because it
takes too long to hand-calculate a mean measure.  If you have
a spreadsheet or program that does the work for you, fine, but
sending all of your individual measures is ok - just not the
optimal solution.
Arne