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? :-)
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.
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%
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?
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