Photometry Database
Photometry is the measurement of the brightness of astronomical objects. A photometric measurement is the brightness of a specific object at a specific time. Photometry is the thing I do at my observatory, studying stars whose brightness varies over time.
I wanted a place to put my photometry for my own convenience -- my aim is not primarily to publish the data to the public. But available to the public it is. I hope to flesh it out with more data in the future so as people study these stars, if they do, they can have free and unfettered access to my data.
It’s called the CBA Minnesota Photometry Database. If you look at, for example, GSC 717-1091 and click the “Create Phase Plot” button, you’ll see how a disparate bunch of data points can be organized into something that tells us a lot about the star. We see it is periodic with a period of about 1/3 days. This turns out to be a pulsating variable -- an RR Lyrae star. If you click the individual (Plot) links on the left side of that page next to the observation totals per day, you can see what an individual night’s data looks like.
So...umm..enjoy!
Saturday, October 21, 2006