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A suggestion for Zapper

HTY
Affiliation
None
Thu, 02/14/2013 - 17:36

There have been a few suggestions about "data cleanup" in others forums and and usually the posters get pointed to Zapper which I agree is an excellent tool and should be used for that purpose.  It occurred to me that the times I most often spot apparent discrepant observations is when I'm using the lightcurve generator.  Frankly, although I have the best of intentions, I rarely get around to firing up Zapper to flag those observations because I'm busy doing something else and usually later it's "What was that star again?"  and  "What was the approximate date of those funny observations?" 

It would be nice to have a button or something right on the lightcurve page to start up a web version of Zapper right then and there with the date range that I was looking at so I could immmediately mark those observations.  I think you might get some more participation in flagging possible discrepant observations.

Just a thought,

...Tim (HTY)

lmk
Affiliation
American Association of Variable Star Observers (AAVSO)
Thu, 02/14/2013 - 18:44
Make cleanup as easy as possible

Thats an excellent suggestion Tim, I fully support that! Whatever way is easier to implement, a link to Zapper from LCG, or better yet, add the Zapper core functionality directly into LCG, so you just click the offending points and submit!

Mike LMK

Thu, 02/14/2013 - 19:15
Looking into it

Thanks for the suggestion, Tim, it's a good idea.  Sara Beck wrote Zapper and is now looking into how to pass a user's login information and the information about the light curve into a Java WebStart link that launches Zapper.

Enabling "zapping" directly from LCG would essentially require an entirely new light curve generator that's java-based, which would require development time from staff or volunteers.  I'd rather start with the first option -- passing plot and user information to the existing Zapper tool.

David Benn
Affiliation
Astronomical Society of South Australia (ASSAU)
Thu, 02/14/2013 - 22:34
Hi Matt, all

I have a few

Hi Matt, all

I have a few comments about this.

  1. If you happen to be using VStar at a particular point in time, you can mark observations as discrepant from there as well; that's a decision Sara and I made quite awhile ago: the more zapping tools, the merrier.
  2. I've been meaning for a long time to create an applet version of VStar that provides some subset of its functionality in a web browser. Applets are admittedly old-school and have been given a bad rap lately (that's another discussion), but it's a much shorter path to that than the next point. Something along these lines is possible for a web-based zapping capability, whether based upon the Zapper or VStar code base or some hybrid of the two.
  3. To be able to click on an observation and mark it as discrepant in a web browser some other way than via an applet, requires an alternative rich-client approach such as AJAX. This is something I was planning to start a conversation about in this forum. The key thing is that, as Matt says, it's not trivial. The second option above is much moreso in a reasonable time frame.

Just my $0.02 worth.

David