[vsnet-chat 5166] Re: [vsnet-obs 38679] Curious observations and reports

[Taichi Kato <tkato@kusastro.kyoto-u.ac.jp>]

Re: [vsnet-chat 5138] Re: [vsnet-obs 38679] Curious observations and reports

> So it is the observer who needs to understand what he is looking at and if
> his/her results are worth reporting.
> Otherwise this sentence : "suggest  professional astronomers not to trust in
> visual (or amateur) observations" will be commonplace.
> We don't like that.

    A sad example which actually occurred last month.  At the beginning of
this season, certain observer(s) reported delta Sco around mag 2.2.
After about a week or two, different observers reported much brighter
magnitudes.  This information was relayed to the initial observer via
a mailing list.  The subsequent result was a report of "remarkable
brightening", rather than re-examination of the past observations.
Upon this information, public news medium noticed "remarkable brightening
within a very short time", and I was requested a comment from the news
medium whether this "outburst" can be explained by the current knowledge
of stellar astronomy and whether it may lead to a more serious consequence...
I had to explain that observers have their own bias, and these magnitudes
are a result of scatter, personal preference, rather than a dramatic
increase of brightness.  (This explanation may have resulted in a distrust
of visual observations by the medium; I have received no further query
about this since then).

    However, even a worse consequence may have been expected, if the
original observer had been left from being announced of other observer's
reports.  It is most likely that the observer started paying more
attention to the quality of estimates of this variable.

Regards,
Taichi Kato

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