*Sky & Telescope Illustration by Casey Reed
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International Year of Astronomy | American Association of Variable Star Observers (AAVSO)
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International Year of Astronomy | American Association of Variable Star Observers (AAVSO)
I am working with eps aur data. If I plot VBRI and click "Plot Observations and Means", the plot changes to V and Visual plots and plots the means...I assume that the means are of the combined V and visual data.If I just plot say the B data and click on POM, the plot shifts back to the V and Visual plot.This function would be more useful if it would plot the means of what ever curve was displayed. That way you could see a smoothed curve of the B or I or V without visual or whatever observations. Thanks Jim Jones
Hi JimThanks for your questions.The first comment to make is that the effects of the "Change Series" buttons and the ensuing dialog box in the "Plot Observations" (PO) and "Plot Observations and Means" (POM) are independent. In other words, you can view different bands in each plot (apart from the means series which is only seen in POM of course).In the POM, you are free to choose whatever bands you want to have displayed, independent of the mean curve.You said: "I assume that the means are of the combined V and visual data." As it turns out, the Change Series button in the POM not only allows you to select which bands are *visible* but also which band (singular) should be used to plot the mean series, hence the radio buttons vs checkboxes for that part of the dialog box.Now, the way I initially implemented it, the means series was indeed taking all bands into account. Mike Umbricht, Arne Henden, and others pointed out that this was not very useful given the delta between some of the bands' magnitudes. However, I still have a lingering question about whether it makes sense for some *subset* of bands to be used together as the basis of calculating the means series, e.g. Visual and Johnson V? If this was so, the radio buttons would be changed to check boxes. I'd like to see some further discussion about this from People Who Know, like Mike, Arne, and folks like yourself who are trying to use VStar to visualise and analyse data, which after all, is why VStar is being developed. :)Thanks.Regards,David
OK David, I see how it works now. That is exactly what I was asking for so I don't have much to complain about.IMO, the only curves where it might make sense to find the means of two combined curves might be V and visual. But I don't think the mean of combined the V and B curves (as an example) wouldn't mean much. But it would be of great utility to plot the difference between curves and find the means of the resulting curve. For example you would be able to plot a B-V curve and get some idea of color change over time. I think this would require a little fussing since the B observations and V observations wouldn't be exactly coincident in time.Jim Jones
I think I understand what you are saying Jim. When you do an Observations Plot and select VBRI, and then choose Observations and Means Plot VStar does not "remember" which bands you selected and reverts to just Vis and V. That is a good point. It probably should remember which ones you are currently working in and keep that when you switch back and forth between different views.
Looks good! All available functions work perfectly on my system.Mac OS 10.6 (Snow Leopard)3.06 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo4 GB 800 MHz DDR2 SDRAM
Has anyone had problems with the Citizen Sky Authentication when using VStar to get a new star from the database?
I talked to Mike about this last night, but will send in this report for the record.When I attempt to download a star from Citizen Sky I get an "Invalid user name or pass word" error. My user name and pass word work fine logging into Citizen Sky.This has happened every time for the last 2 or 3 days.I also (along with others) had the same problem using AAVSO's SeqPlot.I am using XP home, SP2. I have tried 2 different computers.
Hi Jim! Thanks for testing.Does this happen intermittently or you just have never been able to authenticate using VStar? Was it at the same time of day or different times? Trying to determine whether this is a database connection issue or authentication issue in VStar.I had some problems with my username and pass when I started working on vstar, so a couple questions:!DISCLAIMER! Of course don't post any of your authentication information here, and if you're not comfortable answering these in the open please feel free to send to me directly. !DISCLAIMER!Is your username or password less than 2 chars, or greater than 40?Does your username or password contain any characters that aren't in the set below?A-Za-z0-9!@#$%&*()_-+=?<><>.,I may be jumping the gun here, but just trying to get more info as to whether to open a tracker item.
Hi All,I am wondering if some of the login difficulties could have something to do with the recent AAVSO server problems. Last Wednesday we had a problem with the database server which cause us to have to transfer everything over to another server. Nothing was lost, but as a result of the massive data transfers that took place everything slowed to a crawl to the extent that some functions (such as queries and sometimes the entire CS website) pretty much died on occasion, but not all the time. I was assured this morning, that the last of transfer operation was completed last night/early this morning so now everything in terms of the database access should be more stable than it has been for over a week. I'm not suggesting that our server problems could be the cause of any of the login issues that have been experienced, but it might be a good idea to test things again with this in mind.If you all can get to the bottom of this problem and help us to figure out whether it is a server configuration problem or something in the code that causes intermittent login problems, I for one would be eternally grateful!Thank you for your patience!Sara
Sara and DavidOK, let me try this again. Think my first replay is someplace in the Ort cloud.I have never been able authenticate with vstar. This includes many attempts over 2 or 3 days. Both before and after the AAVSO server slow down of the last 24 hours or so. My user name is nothing special...more than 2 characters and less than 40 with no special characters. I do have a space in my user name. I am always able to login to Citizen Sky.Just to clarify my seqplot comment. seqplot works fine for me now. But in the beginning several of us had similar problems loggin in on seqplot. From the discussions last night seqplot and vstar may share the same data base and server.
Hi All,I just uploaded the version of VStar you get by clicking the button to the one that contains Adam's patch (revision 283) so the logon should work now even for people with spaces in their user names. Thank you Adam for finding & fixing that!I would like to make a clarification on what Jim said about seqplot. Since most of you probably don't know what he was talking about, seqplot is a tool used by the AAVSO Chart sequence team to aid in making comparison star sequences on our charts. The relevance is that seqplot uses the same basic Java WebStart(TM) technology to run a Java program that connects to the AAVSO mySQL database much as VStar does. From the beginning there were aggravating intermittent connection problems with seqplot but we are very sure that we solved that (in early September) when we changed the way the mySQL host computer was addressed - using the IP address rather than the machine name. Since VStar has used the IP address from the beginning, any connection problems we experience will have to be from a different cause.So lets keep testing and fixing. Thanks everyone.-Sara
When I attempted to open vstar.jnlp this morning, insteading of opening the program, I got a downloading the application window. I assume this is a feature to auto download vstar if your version isn't up to date.If the download stalls for any reason, you are dead in the water. You can't download and you can't use vstar. Not a real problem now, but you might want to rethink for final version.Thanks.Jim Jones
Hi Jim. Could you tell us a bit more about any problems you have seen due to a download stalling? Did a failed download prevent you from running VStar?After you have downloaded the software it is possible to run VStar when you are offline. You just need to create a desktop shortcut instead of starting it from the webpage. See the directions in the FAQ. Of course, you won't be able to connect to the AAVSO database if you are offline, but you could open data files stored on your computer.WebStart is not the only way to install VStar but it does have the advantage of checking to make sure you have the most recent version. This is esp. important now given how frequent David has been making changes and improvements.Thanks for the comments, they are very useful to us. I've started testing out some modifications to the WebStart and looking to see where we can improve it.
Hi Jim,The auto downloading is a feature of Java WebStart(TM) applications which ensures that users have the latest version of VStar and I just uploaded one this morning. You have a good point about being stuck if the download fails for some reason, but we feel that it is important (especially during this development phase) that everyone has the same version to work with and the .jnlp file can help us achieve that. By the way, we can remove one of your accounts from Citizen Sky but I wanted to make sure we get the right one. Would you prefer to be "Jim Jones" or "jimjones"? If you wish to reply off list you can write to me using sara "at" aavso.org.Thanks!
Thanks to David, Sara and mikeeu. This is a great team to work with.Just to close the circle on seqplot, I just uploaded the newest version and it works right of the box. First time, every time. So whatever you did Sara, it worked.In my fumbling experimentation with the space issue, I wound up with two subscriptions to Citzen Sky and two memberships in this team. Is there any way to remove one?Jim
Space in the username would probably do it. At least as far as VStar's Authentication routines are concerned.https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?func=detail&aid=2899357&group_id=263306&atid=1152052Hopefully that patch will fix it up.
I can recreate Jim's experience using a version I just installed with the "Download VStar Now" button (install worked perfectly!). I can't login and I also have a space in my username("Aaron Price"). LMK when you have updated the "download VSTAR now" version of VStar and I'll try again.
Hi Aaron, Jim, allThis bug as been fixed in SourceForge and it will be included in the next weekly incremental release. Thanks also to Adam Weber for his help with this.Apologies.This kind of problem affirms the approach we are taking of requesting initial testing from VStar Team members in particular.For more detail see:https://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=2899357&group_id=263306&atid=1152052andhttp://vstar.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/vstar/trunk/src/org/aavso/tools/vstar/ui/dialog/LoginDialog.java?view=markup&pathrev=282Thanks.Regards,David
Yeah, that was it. I created an account with no space and vstar works fine. Thanks for the help.