We are excited to announce the launch of our new forums! You can access it forums.aavso.org. For questions, please see our blog post. New threads should be posted on the new forums. The forums at aavso.org/forum will become read-only on September 12, 2024.
"validated" means a human looked at the datapoint and considered it a good estimate rather than a discrepant one. "prevalidated" means the submission passed a series of checks by the computer during the process, so most of the gross errors were eliminated. The "U" "B" "V" are the passbands.
We used to validate all visual data for the AAVSO program stars, but the return on investment was small. A few percent of incoming observations had problems, and we inserted logic checks in the software to take care of the majority of those. We still "validate" data for interesting objects (such as the new nova), and there is a tool called Zapper that you can download to highlight discrepant observations so that the AAVSO staff can investigate them further. However, since we are then just looking at individual datapoints rather than long stretches of light curve, we don't mark any observations as "validated" any more.
Hi Jeremy,
"validated" means a human looked at the datapoint and considered it a good estimate rather than a discrepant one. "prevalidated" means the submission passed a series of checks by the computer during the process, so most of the gross errors were eliminated. The "U" "B" "V" are the passbands.
We used to validate all visual data for the AAVSO program stars, but the return on investment was small. A few percent of incoming observations had problems, and we inserted logic checks in the software to take care of the majority of those. We still "validate" data for interesting objects (such as the new nova), and there is a tool called Zapper that you can download to highlight discrepant observations so that the AAVSO staff can investigate them further. However, since we are then just looking at individual datapoints rather than long stretches of light curve, we don't mark any observations as "validated" any more.
Arne