[vsnet-alert 11310] roboscopes and L: stars

[redvars at fastmail.co.uk]

I'd've thought, with all the time Nicholson spends looking at
semiregulars with roboscopes and taking pretty piccies with said that
over that long interval some amount of the roboscope time would've been
spent taking a few datapoints of at least some of these L: candidates,
what with the roboscopes having better accuracy both photometrically and
astrometrically and fainter limiting magnitudes.

But I suppose that'd've been, what's the word, oh yeh, scientific.  You
know, predicting some stars are possibly variable based on some evidence
and then going and testing the prediction.  Probably barely need half a
dozen datapoints to make L: into L, as in variable rather than suspected
variable.  That'd be a science project for his latest 'science' group
that he tends to set up and make himself head of, a natural programme
for an ostensible datamining and robotic telescope "for science" using
group.


I was going to drop the spreadsheet data through B/VSX at VizieR as that
new B/ catalogue enables batch/list querying of VSX, only to find that
for some unknown reason the B/VSX system doesn't carry a field/column
denoting the variable source.

I suppose a radius search could be done with suitable criteria and for
every instance there was a double or more match it'd be likely one would
be Nicholson's and t'others from publication of catalogues by others.  I
know some were discoveries published either already, at the time, or
since by the Polish SAVS team, classified as semiregulars and such, in
places like IBVS and OEJV (and highly likely not ported into AAVSO VSX
at that time), because I remember telling him so.  Not a significant
percentage, granted, but you'd think he'd want to update his spreadsheet
for these "precovery" discoveries and "confirmations" of "his"
variables.

John Greaves

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