Preparing visual observations
After a few sessions I download all my observations, import them into MS Access, and make a nice table with:
Total number of obs. / starname / JD of last obs. / Mag. of last obs. / was it a fainther than (0 or 1) / startype / Name of campaign or program it is in.
An example for khi and SS Cyg makes it a bit clearer:
21 | khi Cyg | 2456223,27 | 131 | 0 | M | Legacy
38 | SS Cyg | 2456223,27 | 122 | 0 | UGSS | -
With the table sorted by date, it gives me a good idea of the stars that I do and don't need to observe again (because it wasn't long enough ago), what order of magnitude I can expect (don't need binoculars on faint Mira's), if it's an "important" star (included in a campaign, on the legacy list, ...), ...
And of course it's nice to see how many times I have observed a star and how long ago this was. At the back of the list are the supernovas :-).
I actually hate MS Access. Wouldn't this be a nice feature in Webobs? Something like a "Make overview" button? :-)
My 5 weakest observations (not fainter-than, using a 12" dobson)
15.4 X DRA 2012-08-10
15.3 W DRA 2012-08-10
15.2 RS UMA 2012-05-25
15.1 RS UMA 2012-05-13
15.1 RS LYR 2012-05-24
percentage "fainter-than" observations: 4%
number of different objects observed in 2011: 218
number of different objects observed in 2012: 299
percentage of Mira stars in total number: 37%
If there are observers out there that would like to have an overview, send me your downloaded observations (with WebObs as a txt file).
I tried a file with 30,000 observations and it took my computer 412 seconds to calculate. So I guess >50,000 will be too difficult.
Does anyone have a reference file with the VSX startype for each star, or maybe the most common stars? Or is there a way in VSX to download such a file?
You can also import a .txt file like this into Microsoft Excel and do a number of simple analyses that way. And as you have shown, there's a lot of free simple software out there these days to do such things, maybe more for the Unix/Linux world than usoft, but you can always install Cygwin and get the unix on your PC that way too!
Mike LMK
After downloading observations as a .txt file in WebObs, I can import them in my own database (using "Sqliteman"). Now I can make my own queries... So far, this is what I have:
An overview for each star, with magnitude of last observation:
columns: star / date / type (own ref.table) / program (own ref.table) / number of observations / magnitude / fainter than
Total number of observations / month / year
I guess other statistics like percentage of "fainter thans", highest and lowest estimate for each star, ... could be fun also! Suggestions are welcome.