Exoplanet data quality assignment

Affiliation
American Association of Variable Star Observers (AAVSO)
Sun, 02/26/2023 - 22:34

Hi, I have just uploaded my first two WASP-12 b transit observations. 

I was wondering if they are subject to any quality check or ranking as is done on the ETD database?

Regards Andrew

 

Affiliation
American Association of Variable Star Observers (AAVSO)
Exoplanet Data Quality

Hi Andrew,

When an exoplanet observation is submitted to the AAVSO"s Exoplanet Database, there is no calculation of a quality index as is done with ETD, however:

1. There is a sanity check to make sure that the data being submitted is relative NORMALIZED flux (a common mistake is to just enter relative flux).

2.  One measure of "quality," however, is the RMS of the resulting transit light curve - this gives a measure of how close the observed data is to a proper exoplanet transit model fit. For this reason, in the NOTES section of the report, it would be good to include the RMS that AIJ calculates for the transit light curve.

Dennis

Affiliation
American Association of Variable Star Observers (AAVSO)
Data Quality

Good idea Dennis, I have started to add this information in the notes.

I did notice that the "Notes" are not displayed on the "Details" tab so they can't be seen.

It does seem to me that as the size of the data base grows it might be good to have a quality measure (rms or chi^2/dof etc.) as a searchable database field rather than in the notes so that researches can more easily find data that is appropriate to their needs.

Regards Andrew