Notes on "The Gap"

This page consists of notes regarding the gap in the literature being addressed by this group, i.e. what is the key research question that is being asked and answered for the first time?

From jbedient's first email (Sep 6 2010)  to those at the 2nd Citizen Sky workshop meeting that initiated this group: "The general thrust of the project is to analyze the long term light curves of a significant number of Mira variables to determine a mathematical description (the Fourier coefficients) of their light curves.  We are interested in looking at these coefficients and how they (possibly) change over time, and what those changes mean and what they could portend for the future behavior of the star."

tamino (Sep 19 2010): "our real goal is to increase by nearly an order of magnitude from 62 (in an earlier study) to 388, and to include more analysis results (which we'll do) ".