What is "1 magnitude brighter or fainter than the mean magnitude"?

Hello David,

I'm not sure what you mean by "Rbust" but I think that the answer to your question is "moving average". The timescale depends a bit on the period of the star and what type of variable it is.

Just use your eye to draw an imaginary curve through the data and if you find a point that is well above or below what other observers have reported on or around the same day on an LPV for example, you can flag it. If the star is poorly observed and you have nothing with which to compare the suspicious point (in the same band), then leave it alone.

We're really just looking for gross outliers. Please don't over-analyze it.

A positive observation is any point that is not "fainter-than"

Many thanks,
Sara

I have to confess I do suffer from chronic "over-analyze"  :)

I dont' no much about "Rbust mean",.... other than some guy was using it for his analysis of Alf Ori, and it does a good job of handling outliers.

"Rbust mean" sounds like "robust mean", of which there are several varieties, notably winsorized and truncated means.