[vsnet-survey 23] Re: Survey bookkeeping

[Brian Skiff <bas@lowell.edu>]

     The Strasbourg data center had as an early goal the assembly of 
bibliography for all objects, but even they have been swamped by the rapid
increase in the current literature.  There have been efforts to produce
machine-readable reference lists for variables, such as having the Sonneberg
hand-written card file keyed-in (see:  ftp://cdsarc.u-strasbg.fr/cats/VI/67/
to have a look at it).  All that stuff of course should be in SIMBAD, but most
of it is not.
     I agree that there should be a central variable-star nomenclature scheme,
lest there be chaos in the literature, and much pointless duplication of
effort.  It was the same problem on a smaller scale 100 years ago that forced
the Kiel Institute to start the annual numbering scheme in the "Astronomische
Nachrichten" (the source of preliminary designations of the form '123.1934').
The problem with the current set-up is that despite their best efforts the GCVS
team cannot keep up:  how do we help them greatly increase their efficiency,
such that they would be able to send out a list of newly-designated variables
once per month?  They would have to insist that candidates be published with
an arcsecond or better position, with a complete and well-sampled phased
lightcurve derived from data in at least one standard photometric passband, and
a finder chart.  The incidental variables that Kato-san mentions would have
to be dealt with one at a time, probably with low priority, since the surveys
would sweep them up eventually.  Again, this is similar to what's going on at
present in the asteroid realm, with 70% of the astrometry coming from one
survey "machine" (LINEAR), and, this past month at least, nearly all the rest
coming from just one other (LONEOS).  The number of observations/discoveries
by others is incidental.

\Brian

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