More BAAVSS data now available through the AAVSO

Affiliation
American Association of Variable Star Observers (AAVSO)
Fri, 08/28/2015 - 11:07

It gives me great pleasure to announce that the next installment of 400,000+ observations from the British Astronomical Association Variable Star Section (BAAVSS) archive are now available through the AAVSO website.

The first data import occured in December 2014 and was described here: https://www.aavso.org/baavss-data-now-available-through-aavso

With this installment, the AAVSO database now makes available over 1.6 million observations from the BAAVSS archive that were not independently submitted to the AAVSO by its members. We plan to continue adding and updating data periodically, but the vast majority of observations from the BAAVSS archive are now available whenever you download data or look at a light curve.

We hope that you will appreciate the additional data coverage that results from the combined archives of these two venerable organizations.

Many thanks to the Director of the BAAVSS, Roger Pickard, and to the BAAVSS Database Secretary, Andrew Wilson, for making this project possible.

Sara Beck, AAVSO Technical Staff
Matthew Templeton, AAVSO Science Director
 

 

Affiliation
Vereniging Voor Sterrenkunde, Werkgroep Veranderlijke Sterren (Belgium) (VVS)
29 million passed

And it passed the 29th million observations.

Josch

Affiliation
American Association of Variable Star Observers (AAVSO)
Good job!

[quote=BSJ]

With this installment, the AAVSO database now makes available over 1.6 million observations from the BAAVSS archive that were not independently submitted to the AAVSO by its members.

[/quote]

It must have been quite an effort to not get any duplicates ;)

Mike

 

Affiliation
American Association of Variable Star Observers (AAVSO)
Duplicates

You're right Mike, I did have to put a lot of thought into that - particularly as the JDs and magnitudes of duplicate observations don't always match up exactly (different number of decimal places, rounding differences, etc.)

I tried to err on the conservative side with an algorithm that basically assumed an observation was a duplicate if it was for the same star, observed by the same person, on the same night (+/- a fudge factor) using the same method (i.e. visual or CCD). Magnitude and filter weren't even considered.

Of course, something might have found a way to slip through, so if anyone sees anything suspicious, please let me know.

-Sara

Affiliation
British Astronomical Association, Variable Star Section (BAA-VSS)
Duplicates

That's quite an achievement Sara - well done!  

Gary

Affiliation
American Association of Variable Star Observers (AAVSO)
More potential goldmines

Now, if Kato-san could be persuaded to supply the VSNET observations to AAVSO, that would likely add a few more millions! I know they haven't been particularly interested in sharing in the past, but AFAIK, they still do not have any public web-based query available for their large dataset? Combining it with WebObs would be a great benefit for all.

And, then there is the VSOLJ, as well as AFOEV, among others. Lots of potential here to works towards a comprehensive worldwide collaboration of data! :)

Mike

 

Affiliation
British Astronomical Association, Variable Star Section (BAA-VSS)
VSnet

Your right Mike. Nothing post 2003.  Lots of old stuff and information still available at...

www.kusastro.kyoto-u.ac.jp/vsnet/

with an interesting set of links to various pages - but you can't access the database (forbidden).  

Gary