APASS news for December 1, 2011

Affiliation
American Association of Variable Star Observers (AAVSO)
Thu, 12/01/2011 - 22:21

Both APASS-north and APASS-south are working smoothly.  We have two volunteers to help on the manual fix-up required for the astrometric solution for some frames - Gary Myers and Bill Goff.  We can use one more volunteer!  The requirements are a linux or MacOS computer that can run X-windows.  Contact me directly if you are interested in helping out.

Currently, we've covered about 80% of the sky twice.  Those fields will make it into Data Release 4, which will be available about Christmas.  We've started the secondary fields (which are offset by one half of the field width from the primary fields, so that we have center-to-corner overlap) in those areas where we've finished the primary coverage.  It will take another year or so to finish the secondary fields, at which time we will have four visits to every point in the sky.

We are in the initial planning stages for a refurbishment trip to CTIO to add a couple of features and do basic annual maintenance; that trip may take place in late January.  In November, we submitted an NSF proposal to help pay for the final global solution for APASS, so that the end product will have the best possible astrometry and photometry.  Wish us luck!

Next up: the first APASS journal paper.  I hope to get that submitted in January.

Arne