[Aavso-photometry] Stellar Project #2

[arne]

Last year, I gave QX Pup as the first stellar project.  This unusual
star/nebula has been fun to follow; if you look at its light curve,
you can see that it is about at maximum light this season.

Now, for Stellar Project 2 - a rainy night project!
This is one to test your ability to use your photometry software.
Like all real science, there is no one "truth", but the idea
is to measure a set of images and produce the
best light curves that you can.  You need to download:

ftp://ftp.aavso.org/public/sro/stellar2/star_coords.txt
ftp://ftp.aavso.org/public/sro/stellar2/v1412aql.zip

where the 45MB zip file contains 30 1kx1k CCD images from Sonoita of
the field of V1412 Aql, a possibly eclipsing variable discovered
by Arlo Landolt. This will be the subject of a campaign in the near future,
but in anticipation of that campaign, I calibrated the field and
obtained several nights of time-series photometry last year.

Each of the images is a 4-minute exposure using the C14.  In the
accompanying text file, I've identified 3 stars for you to measure
(star 02 is V1412 Aql itself), and given you a rough idea of the
magnitude and (B-V) color.  The object is to give me the best light
curves you can of each of the 3 stars.  It may require adjusting
aperture sizes, or using ensemble photometry, or psf-fitting or whatever;
you get to choose.  To the best of my knowledge, none of the three
is variable over the 3 hours of this time series, but I haven't checked
closely.  I won't guarantee the orientation of the images; either
pixel (1,1) will be the northeast corner, or 180 degrees rotated
from that since this is a German equatorial mount.

Rules:  give me three ASCII text files, one for each star.  Each
file should have JD, magnitude, magnitude error for all 30 images.
If you know how to transform, I'd suggest transforming the data as
the images cover quite an airmass range, but let me know the
details of what software you used, what settings
you used, any other parameters of the reduction process in the
accompanying email.  Mail me the results privately, so as to not
clutter mail-list member mailboxes.  I'll inspect the results,
and announce a "winner" in a few weeks.

I'll buy the person who gets the lowest realistic noise and
realistic errors for the three stars a beer (or other drink of
their choice) at the next meeting that they attend.
Arne