Date: Thu, 16 Mar 2006 12:30:50 -0600
From: Richard Huziak <huziak
	rv:1.0.2) Gecko/20030208 Netscape/7.02
References: <004701c64904$f864f2e0$bc6fe504

Interesting discussion, and always the first question of new observers 
few stars that have a lot of observations so that the newbies can 
compare to the rest and gain confidence, and then also recommend a few 

I have always been a proponent of a 'varstar lottery' where you are 
assigned by head office (or you could chose from available stars off the 
master list) say, 10 stars of various types, and you observe these first 
EVERY night you observe no matter what type of star.  After the 10 
stars, then you do whatever you want for the rest of the night.  In this 
way, every star receives at least basic coverage, and with the hundreds 
of observers who contribute obs to the dbase, virtually every program 
star could be covered to some extent.   Should an observer drop out, 
their stars would be returned to the 'lottery' and then reassigned to 
the next one who needs stars.   When I did a lot of visual (until I 
stars in about 25 minutes.  (You can check out the light curves for a 
Cyg, DFCyg, U Cyg, and use my observer code (HUZ)).   Even with the 
conversion to CCD, there are a number of stars I hit every night 
regardless of the type (even Miras) so that continuous curves can be 
generated (BU Cyg, S Cyg and several others).  

It should be remembered that visual curves work best with a lot of data 
since the curves are analysed statistically, so there is really no such 
(more) stars is difficult.    At the other extreme, observing 200 stars 
once each season to try and cover the whole dbase doesn't do much for a 
light curve, so I think it is best to have part of your program 
concentrate on a few stars every night, and even if they Miras, (and 
10 nights), that you would really want to do these stars as often as you 
least a few stars, hopefully lesser observed ones, would end up with 
decent light curves.

Just some thoughts (and sorry for the rambling sentences).

Rick


Mike Simonsen wrote:

>  
>
<SNIP>


* * * * * * * * * * * * *
Richard Huziak
Manufacturing Engineering
SED Systems
Saskatoon, SK, Canada
<huziak
* * * * * * * * * * * * * 



_______________________________________________