Image Inspector needed for BSM_NM

Affiliation
American Association of Variable Star Observers (AAVSO)
Sat, 12/03/2022 - 16:02

Bob Dudley has been reviewing BSM_NM images since 2015, doing an excellent job!  He is "retiring" from his Image Inspector job, and will be missed.

Therefore, we need a volunteer to take over Bob's duties.  Basically, after every observing night, the volunteer will be emailed to let them know images are available to be inspected.  You will browse through the thumbnails on the AAVSOnet page, looking for problems such as poor focus, poor tracking, improper flatfielding, etc.  The flats for a night are also posted, and you should page through them to ensure that something doesn't change.

This effort should take 30-60 minutes per observing night, on the high side at the beginning and taking less time as you get proficient.  It is actually quite fun to do this, as you get to see some really pretty fields, and some interesting "artifacts" like satellites and airplanes.  The image reviewing helps the AAVSOnet team tremendously, as you let us know when problems start and they can be corrected quickly.  Right now, your reviews are put into a database and problems are automatically posted to the AAVSOnet maillist, but in the future, the reviews will be available to the researchers to help them analyze their data.

BSM_NM is a pretty prolific system, observing on ~200 nights per year.  You can get behind a little, but try not to be more than a week behind.  It will be more difficult to catch up, and the Team doesn't get problem reports in a timely fashion.

If anyone wants to volunteer, let me know.

Arne