re: VS reporting format

Dear Mr. Kato,

you wrote

>     So I would like to suggest that we should adopt some sort of
> international reporting format.  The requirement of the format should

I'm agree with you!

>  (1) object name. 

I think we should take two object names, at first the short designation
hhmmsdd, e.g. 1054+33 *and* the name in your format. Everyone may gave
only one of this desigs. For identification a file of all desigs
should be circulated or FTPable.

>  (2) time of observation.
>     year(-1900), month, date in UT (fraction of a day).

Why -1900? 2000 is near!

>  (3) magnitude
>     For visual observations, the decimal points are omitted.

Sorry, I cannot agree. So you must restrict all values to 1/10 mag,
also photometry often goes to 1/100 and maybe also 1/1 mag may
be sometimes useful (supernova in the near?).

>     130p  (photographic, mag = 13.0)
>     12.55V

So you must check, if a decimal point is given or not.

>  (4) observer's code
>     The code name (and the organization name).  May not be unique.

Why not full real name and country.

>   We would appreciate your comments on this project.

It may be also useful to put in descriptions of columns with some
'must' columns, e.g.

Object=SN1994I Date=19940501.5678 Mag=15.67 Band=V Observer=Fantasy,Mike Country=Japan Comment=Nothing

But than the line would be very long.

>   We have been preparing preliminary version of comupter programs to help
> reporting in this format (one for DOS, with C source code, the other an awk
> script) which may be distributed freely.

That would be VERY good.


## net_sh v1.6 (sb)

Jost Jahn