Preparing visual observations

Affiliation
Vereniging Voor Sterrenkunde, Werkgroep Veranderlijke Sterren (Belgium) (VVS)
Sat, 11/17/2012 - 16:57

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? :-)

Affiliation
Vereniging Voor Sterrenkunde, Werkgroep Veranderlijke Sterren (Belgium) (VVS)
progress

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

U GEM

2012-11-17

UGSS+E

Top2

6

14.1

1

V GEM

2012-11-17

M

 

3

14.4

0

Z UMA

2012-11-17

SRB

Legacy – Top1

48

9.1

0

BU PER

2012-11-16

SRC

 

13

9.9

0

CQ TAU

2012-11-16

INSA

 

8

11.5

0

DN TAU

2012-11-16

INST

Univ. Exeter 2013

3

12.6

0

DR TAU

2012-11-16

EXOR

Univ. Exeter 2013

3

12.2

0

R CAS

2012-11-16

M

Legacy

29

11.7

0

R DEL

2012-11-16

M

 

5

13

1

R TAU

2012-11-16

M

 

11

11.2

1

RR TAU

2012-11-16

UXOR

BAAVSS 2013

6

13.1

0

RU TAU

2012-11-16

M

 

3

14.2

1

RX AND

2012-11-16

UGZ

 

10

14.6

0

RY TAU

2012-11-16

INT

Univ. Exeter 2013

3

10.6

0

S CAS

2012-11-16

M

 

7

12.3

1

Total number of observations / month / year

106

1

2012

113

2

2012

265

3

2012

54

4

2012

100

5

2012

63

6

2012

150

7

2012

192

8

2012

175

9

2012

152

10

2012

65

11

2012

92

3

2011

141

4

2011

148

5

2011

116

6

2011

140

7

2011

175

8

2011

191

9

2011

302

10

2011

251

11

2011

20

12

2011

13

8

1997

12

9

1997

I guess other statistics like percentage of "fainter thans", highest and lowest estimate for each star, ... could be fun also! Suggestions are welcome.

Affiliation
Vereniging Voor Sterrenkunde, Werkgroep Veranderlijke Sterren (Belgium) (VVS)
and we go on

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%

Affiliation
Vereniging Voor Sterrenkunde, Werkgroep Veranderlijke Sterren (Belgium) (VVS)
overview

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?

Affiliation
American Association of Variable Star Observers (AAVSO)
Many options for this

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