Affiliation
American Association of Variable Star Observers (AAVSO)
Tue, 01/15/2019 - 23:32
Phil posted his syllabus doe CCD2, So I figured I woud post the CCD1 syllabus. Feel free to ask any questions about the course and see my earlier post for more information
Ed
File Upload
Thank you for the syllabus. I appreciate it, and I am looking forward to the course.
One thing I am interested in is learning how to evaluate my system for best performance so that I can routinely get to 0.01 mag error for readings, for example, determing the quality of my flats, double checking my CCD's linearity so I keep iimages within that range, etc. I've appreciate learnign how others checked and tuned their system to obtain best performance. Thank you and best regards.
Mike
Hi Mike,
We cover determining linearity and taking flats in the course. Quality of flats is discussed. Routinely achieving 0.01 mag uncertainty is a more complicated matter involving more factors than calibration, but I can provide some hints to help you access how you are doing before you move on to learning how to transform your data in CCD2. Achieving results that can be compared between different observers requires transforming your data. Phil does an outstanding job of teaching that in the CCD2 class.
See you in February,
Ed
Hi Ed. I'm considering taking the course but will be away from home the first week and hotel-bound for work. I'm still a bit unclear as to the format of the course - how and when its actually taught - could you provide some further details?
Thanks,
Keith
Keith,
We do most of our business mostly via a forum. Participants gain access to the forum once enrolled and I open the forum. I will have the emails of each participant, so we are also in email contact. Each week we have assigned readings and I pose questions for discussion. Active participation in the forum discussions are required and I will ask, from time to time, that participants share some results from an exercise. As an example: I will ask participants to both send me a graph of their linearity test and share that graph with the rest of the class. Individual problems may be solved via direct email.
I am on the forum each day. The first week is mostly taken up with introductory material, so if you can steal away a couple of hours during the first it should not be difficult. But do read the syllabus, you can prepare your responses before you leave and be ready to participate or even sign up for the class. See the syllabus in my first post on this thread.
Hope you can join us, Ed