Getting Data
 
Chad had asked “When you're doing your research, how long does it take to collect the data?”
 
It depends what you mean. I’ll go from the shortest time scales to the longest.
 
  1. •A typical image is usually around 3 minutes.
  2. •A typical series of images is between 15 minutes and 5 hours or so.
  3. •A typical project of following a specific star for a specific reason, usually lasts at least a few weeks and usually several years.
 
If you look at this star, for example (GSC 3047-176) you’ll see we observed it 1445 times (meaning that many images) on 19 different nights over the course of 2 years.
Sunday, April 23, 2006