Affiliation
American Association of Variable Star Observers (AAVSO)
Fri, 12/25/2020 - 22:45
Entering individual observations of "Visual" type into WebObs, the "Filter" flag "Vis." is replaced by a blank in the page "WebObs Search Results". It doesn't matter at that stage, but such measurements don't appear anymore under LCGv2. How to check visually such observations? Thank you by advance.
Hello Pierre,
We have discovered that there is a bug which causes WebObs to assign "unknown" or "NA" to the band field for visual observations. Until we are able to fix the problem and correct the observations, you should be able to find your newest observations in LCGv2 by selecting the band called "NA".
I hope this helps.
-Sara
Hello Sara,
Thank you for your answer. But NA is not editable, and allowing NA (the yellow ellipse) into LCGv2 doesn't display the new individual observations. Hopefully, another workaround is the upload of a .txt file with an unique observation. That works.
Personally I prefer #DATE=EXCEL instead of JD (there is no cheap watch displaying the JD). But the trouble is that the result of the Excel's NOW() function is varying from one country to another one. I understood that the american format is "mm/dd/yyyy hh:mm:ss [a/p].m". That is a gobbledygook for non-american people, because of the strange relation UTC vs JD:
[00:00, 12:00[ a.m = morning, midnight included, noon excluded
]00:00, 12:00[ p.m = afternoon, noon and midnight excluded
[12:00, 13:00[ a.m = same behavior as [00:00, 01:00[ a.m
anything else = The website encountered an unexpected error. Please try again later.
So, an observation from Nouméa (New-Caledonia) at 11:00 p.m (local time, which is UTC+11) exactly, cannot be sent through an uploaded file with #DATE=EXCEL. It requires #DATE=JD with no fractional part (2459209.0 for instance)!
I suggested that just as a temporary workaround, essentially for other observers.
Good luck!
Pierre
Hello Sara,
Thank you! WebObs for individual observations works fine. And LCGv2 too.
Just tell me if, when uploading a file, I'm wrong about #DATE=EXCEL. Or not.
Anyway, thanks!
Pierre
Hello Pierre,
Thank you for pointing out the bug with the #DATE=EXCEL format. I just tried to submit an observation with a date of 12/25/2020 12:00:00 p.m. which should convert to JD 2459209.0 (noon in UT) and I got the failure message. An observation submitted using #DATE=JD with a JD of 2459209.0 will work OK.
We will add this to our list of things to be fixed.
Many thanks, Sara
Hello Sara,
Fine! Thanks too for the lovely greeting card from AAVSO! My best wishes in return.
Pierre
This should be fixed now.
Thanks,
Bert Pablo,
Staff Astronomer, AAVSO