We've discovered some software and processing glitches in the AAVSOnet processing that will affect observers. The important things to remember are that the raw image archive is safe, and that image collection continues while we resolve the issues. However, some of the problems may require that you re-analyze your images. No single person involved with the pipeline is to blame; we all share responsibility. While the issues are being resolved, I've had processing turned off for all of the telescopes, and am personally looking at each one in detail to ensure its processing is being done properly before resumption. The first four systems have been restarted. I'll give you their issues below. As nights are reprocessed, you will probably be getting new "you've got data" messages. Our apologies for this impact on your science.
Going forward, I will be working with Doc to ensure a good daily monitoring procedure for the pipeline is in place. I am also working with volunteers on creating a new, far more robust, pipeline for future processing.
BSM_South
The main ST-8XME camera failed in January. Peter Nelson supplied a loaner ST-10XME camera that was used in February and March, and then the repaired ST-8XME camera was installed for April. Matt's processing scripts work well, but have little error checking, and ST-8 calibration frames were used for the ST-10 data. In addition, we did not have a complete set of darks and biases for the repaired ST-8 until just recently. We've re-processed the new ST-8 April nights and turned on automatic processing for future nights. We'll go back and get the ST-10 nights in another week or so. If you have any data from February, March, or April nights that were processed prior to April 25, 2016, they need to be removed from the AID and re-analyzed when reprocessed images are available.
OC61
While BSM_South was down, we turned off OC61 as a precaution. That processing has resumed. There are no known processing problems with OC61.
SRO50
Flats were not being handled properly by the scripts. We're reprocessing all nights from 160314 forward. The main issue was that older flats were used instead of newly created ones. Since this is a closed system, older flats are probably ok, but you should look at your data and convince yourself that the photometry looks alright and doesn't need to be redone.
coker30
This is a similar issue to BSM_South. In this case, Phil Coker's ACF 12-inch failed last summer, and he loaned us his RCX 12-inch. While the camera and filters remain the same, the focal ratio and OTA style changed. At the same time, the flat file naming convention was updated to standardize processing, but the nightly script to process images was not updated. So the older ACF flats were used to calibrate the RCX images. Bill Goff also changed the ACP software from version 7 to version 8, and that meant a couple of short September nights (150905 and 150907) were not placed in standard directories and were not processed. We've transferred and processed those two nights, and are working on creating proper flats and reprocessing all data from October 2015 forward. Since the RCX has significant vignetting that will not be corrected by the ACF flats, it is strongly recommended that you reanalyze all coker30 data from October 2015 to present. It was a cloudy winter, so not many nights are involved. Currently, the month of October is completed. I'll keep you informed as other months are reprocessed.
Arne
Here is the current processing status of the AAVSOnet telescopes.
BSM_Berry up to date.
BSM_South reprocessing completed. The February/March ST-10 nights have not been processed yet.
BSM_NM up to date
BSM_HQ suffers from two problems. When we did the upgrade to ACP V8, there were a couple of partial nights that did not get processed (similar to coker30). In addition, BSM_NM is the only system that (during the winter) takes data across the UT Date boundary. The software did not properly transfer all images taken on a given local night, so about 5% of the imaging has not been processed. We will adress this problem after all of the other systems have been brought up to date.
BSM_Hamren 11 nights of data had not been transferred to HQ when the host computer died. We are in the process of transferring those images and should be caught up by early next week.
coker30 up to date, reprocessing completed
SRO up to date, reprocessing completed
OC61 up to date, reprocessing completed
TMO61 there are several early nights that were not processed, and the flats were incorrectly processed for later nights. This is the system that we are currently working on.
Arne