[Aavso-photometry] [AAVSO-DIS] The AAVSO Photometric All-Sky Survey (APASS)

[Brian D. Warner]

>>>>>>>>>>>>
You know how hard it is to get a field calibrated? 
<<<<<<<<<<<

Yes.

This will, indeed, be a great project. From my usual perspective
of asteroids (I've invaded the VS newsgroups again!), I'm working
with a "new" variable star almost every night I observe. Those
pesky asteroids just won't sit still.

Having well-calibrated fields almost everywhere, or least very
close, will make putting asteroid observations on J-C or SDSS
standard bands much easier. This makes matching night-to-night
sessions more accurate, which will be critical in coming days 
if - as predicted - tumbling asteroids become one of the next 
hot topics. Some serious work needs to be done on slow rotating 
asteroids that may or may not be tumbling when they should or 
shouldn't be. I'll be talking about this at the SAS/AAVSO spring 
meeting in Big Bear. 

Long periods - sounds like some thing you Mira observations would 
love to tackle - though "long" is relative. In my case it's > 24 h, 
usually > 48 h. I'm working one now that appears to have a period 
of about 1100 hours. Mondays there must be **** but the weekends
are glorious.

If nothing else, having accurate standard magnitudes means that
the absolute magnitude of the asteroid can be determined with
more confidence. Not only does this mean that ephemerides will
predict the asteroid's brightness correctly, the absolute
magnitude can be converted to a good estimate of the diameter. 
We all want to know if that next oncoming rock really is the
big one!


Clear Skies,
Brian D. Warner
Palmer Divide Observatory / Space Science Institute