Affiliation
American Association of Variable Star Observers (AAVSO)
Fri, 01/05/2018 - 18:21
Friends,
Happy new year!! I hope it is a healthy, peaceful and prosperous for all.
It is a pleasure to announce that we reached 35 million observations on the AID, on Dec 31st at 03:18 UT. Thank you to all observers worldwide who are enriching our international database with such amazing data!!
Best wishes - clear skies,
Stella.
Good job for everyone! Is the count on main site equal to official amount of observations? I've got a screenshot taken around 30 Dec 21:11 UT (+/- 3 minutes) showing 35.000.080 observations, so it's a few hours difference.
Regards,
Gabriel Murawski
Hi Gabriel,
The count on the homepage should be the same as what is in the database but unfortunately, counting these milestones is not an exact science. The database is a fluid thing with observations being added and deleted all the time. I myself removed some older duplicate observations a few days ago which could have moved the count back a bit. The 35 millionth record that Stella refers to is based on the records in the database as they are today, counting from when they were actually added, not when they were made.
If anyone gets a screenshot showing the exact observation when a milestone is crossed, please feel free to post it here!
Best regards,
Sara
I wonder whether we may want to announce other metrics as well. In the past many people have felt a bit uncomfortable with a focus on pure number of observations. Other metrics could be number of objects, nr of oberservers who contributed etc. In addition to these metrics that will by definition increase monotonously, one might also think about metrics that are taken over a time window, e,g. the last 30 days (or 28 days...whatever): observations , objects, active observers during the time window.
CS
HBE