Affiliation
American Association of Variable Star Observers (AAVSO)
Tue, 02/22/2022 - 22:00
I am looking for a source for NSVS time-series photometry. It used to be hosted at the website skydot.lanl.gov, but for several months now, that URL takes me to a page saying it is down for "scheduled maintenance". I've submitted several messages, starting a couple of months ago, via the site's "Site Feedback" form, to no effect.
Gary Billings
Gary:
I posed the same question on the "Data Miing" forum over two months ago and got no response. A few papers that I'm in the process of writing have been held up since I can't find get access to early lightcurves. No luck also with sending any message to the website.
Kevin
Looks as though the related URL, www.rotse.net, although running, also has no data access. It seems likely that the project has had its plug pulled. It would be too bad if these data were lost. Perhaps Peter Wozniak or another person connected to the project could be queried, and possibly provide "all" the data for more permanent storage. Given there was NASA and NSF funding, perhaps there is an archive hidden somewhere at a NASA or other .gov site. Once it ran out of funding --- or in anticipation of it --- the folks should have offered the dataset to (for instance) the CDS-Strasbourg with another copy to AAVSO.
Something similar should be being done right now for ASAS-3 before it goes away (or has another failure), and plans made for ASAS-SN, Evryscope, and the numerous other on-going or defunct surveys. Disc storage is cheap, so there's no real reason not to do it.
\Brian
I just sent an email to P. Wozniak at Los Alamos National Laboratory asking about the status of the NSVS archives. Hopefully it doesn't end up in his junk mail box.
Kevin
Brian/Gary:
I finally got a response back from W. Thomas Vestrand at the Los Alamos National Observatory and here is his response:
Hi Kevin,
The NSVS server was shut down by LANL because it does not comply with the current LANL security policies. We are currently looking at how we might bring it back into compliance, but it looks like we might have to move to a non-LANL site like AWS. Unfortunately, this is an unfunded effort so it is likely to take several more months before we find a solution.
cheers,
Tom
This sounds like something the AAVSO should host.
BTW - Akerlof's project ran for ~5 years, but NSVS is only one year's worth of data IIRC. I wonder what happened to the rest of it.
Arne
I've suggested separately to Kevin Alton that an obvious place to copy the data would be a national facility, such as the NASA MAST archive, and also the CDS-Strasbourg. I'm pretty sure the LANL folks would feel more comfortable doing that rather than (only) to the AAVSO. If it's a matter of somebody buying a couple of 4Tb discs or whatever, I'll be pleased to contribute. I've given Kevin the e-mail contact for Mark Allen, director of the CDS, as a place to start on getting the data more accessible.
\Brian
Vizier already serves up the NSVS catalogue, but not the light curves. I.e. listing of the stars and mean mags. But we want the light curves, i.e. the individual photometry records.
Further to Arne's comment: yes, NSVS is actually less than a year: closer to half a year, IIRC. Imagine what could be done if that dataset were the full 5 years! And used in conjunction with ASAS-SN -- wow!
Gary Billings
The fact that VizieR already has the summary catalogue is good, because it may mean they already have some of the metadata. They have provision for linking to lightcurve data with simple plotting and period-phasing graphics already built-in to the VizieR system (the Hipparcos epoch photometry is one example). So I don't think this should be problem. I mean, they serve FITS files with spectra (SDSS, LAMOST, etc) and lots else, so they're set up for this sort of thing.
To me the main advantage of having stuff served through VizieR is that it is easy to discover that data exist for specific stars, and links directly to the literature --- neither of which obtains as regards the AID. The other big thing is that it doesn't soak up the bandwidth at AAVSO HQ (or the cloud or...). As mentioned above, someone should write Mark Allen at the CDS to see if they're willing to host it, and if so, can surely make authoritative arrangements with LANL to acquire and curate the data.
\Brian