Affiliation
American Association of Variable Star Observers (AAVSO)
Tue, 12/22/2020 - 12:22
I was sad to hear that TA was going to be lost because of the new web site. VPhot is a difficult option for me because when you have satellite internet, uploading multiple images to VPhot is not practical for me.
It is still available here - https://www.aavso.org/transformapplier, though I don't know if this is the same version as in VPhot, or whether it will continue to be updated. I tried VPhot for a year, and prefer an offline analysis solution as well (one of the reasons being often having to wait in the analysis queue).
The implementation of TransformApplier in VPhot duplicates the functionality of the standalone application. You do not have to upload images or process them in VPhot. All you provide to the application is the submission form that you have prepared for WebObs.
The reason the standalone version of TA is no longer functional is because it was written with a compiler that cannot cope with the modern https internet of today.
George
The stand-alone TA quit working for me about a week ago; no connection to VSX, I guess. Turns out, I don't need the stand-alone program. After some grumbling, I have been using TA on VPHOT successfully (not the two filter thing, but the TransformApplier). Have not figured out the ensemble angle yet. The Help files are interesting but didn't help me much for figuring out the mechanics/process, but operation can be figured out. The B, I, R, V AAVSOreports are browsed and loaded, just like in the standalone TA. The TA itself doesn't seem to need much internet bandwidth; only uploading and downloading the short AAVSO report text files. The transformed report is saved to computer and submitted later with WEBOBS. The detailed report is nice, but not suitable for WEBOBS. So, next, will test a time series, and then go dig up the old forum notes for ensemble TA. Seems like someone found a trick to do ensemble TA.
Ray