User talk:Tdall

Very nice Thomas, you did it! Don't forget that you can put 4 tildes ( ~ ) at the end of a text you contributed to in order to automatlically put your signature. --cedric 15:49, 2 January 2006 (CLST)

Binary Status
Thomas, in the Binary Status page, why should we restrict ourselves to these very simple abbrevations. I agree that we must define categories, but "V" or "N" is a bit short, and will imply to visit the page of explanation everytime... I propose:


 * Single
 * Visual Binary
 * Spectroscopic Binary
 * SB1
 * SB2
 * SB3

--cedric 15:56, 3 January 2006 (CLST)

Blazhko effect
I found this in the Variability Types page: Blazhko effect. Any explanation to provide? -- cedric 15:03, 4 January 2006 (CLST)

If you feel so inclined ;-) Tdall 15:31, 4 January 2006 (CLST)

Warf. I've added a google link instead. -- cedric 11:26, 5 January 2006 (CLST)

Variability Types
Check out the page Variability Types! The details... I have created a Simbad template. If you find some missing link to SIMBAD for some stars, just use:. Replace Simbad by SimbadUS to get the US server... -- cedric 16:08, 4 January 2006 (CLST)

Template:Star
As far as I can tell for the moment, you cannot add the sections "Observations", "Quick-look" in the template Template:Star, because when editing the page, you cannot choose where to put your text, and when using the "edit" links on the right on the page itself of the star, you end up by editing the template, which you don't want to touch! I'll see if the edit links can be fixed. -- cedric 16:39, 4 January 2006 (CLST)

Pages and Star' names
About the problem of the star name BD+07 2411B. Why not simply say to everybody that "+" must be replaced by spaces in names, while it is the opposite for SIMBAD links, as in the Star template? A page like that BD 07 2411B isn't it better (i.e. more correct) than BD07 2411B, and more coherent with star name that contain a "minus" sign, that work anyway? -- cedric 11:24, 5 January 2006 (CLST)

GJ 406 alias CN Leo
might be an interesting target to add in VSOP. high res is missing, might be a young star in the solar neighbourhood. Have TIMMI2 imaging, and appeared extended (?)

Thomas answers: Maybe. I initiated the discussion on the page of the star... Tdall 18:32, 16 January 2006 (CLST)

(You can directly link to the discussion page; I have corrected your link -- cedric 21:40, 16 January 2006 (CLST))

About VSOP
Hi Thomas, Just to say that I have added infos on the About page of VSOP here. You might want to add more things. I'll also make this page available from the left-hand menu. -- cedric 09:29, 5 April 2006 (CLT)

fits.gz filenames
Hi Thomas. We have a problem with the fits.gz filenames. When you point to a 1D-VSOP spectrum link, the name is fine. However, once unzipped, you end up with the HARPS.2006... VLT compliant name, which is a pain. This is rather strange actually. It looks like the wiki is renaming the file only in appearance, not not for real. Can you confirm that you just zipped an HARPS.2006 VLT compliant name, and uploaded as such, letting the wiki to rename it? Thanks. -- cedric 03:47, 8 April 2006 (CLT)


 * I did. Uploaded the HARPS.... filename and let the wiki do the renaming. I think it's fine that you get the original name back when unzipping; that's a check that I did not do something wrong when uploading. Tdall 16:32, 8 April 2006 (CLT)


 * I checked and the Mac is doing something strange... When my browser automatically open the fits.gz file, I get it back to HARPS.2006... but when I download the fits.gz and then open it from the terminal, I get the correct name. Whatever, Mac business. -- cedric 07:25, 11 April 2006 (CLT)

Template:Star : What do we do?
Thomas, we need to discuss about the Template:Star page. As you can see for V414 Pup, this does not work well, since we have HARPS and FEROS observations. What do you think. I think John's DRS page are very nice, although it's out of the wiki. What do you think? -- cedric 07:27, 11 April 2006 (CLT)

Summary Table
Hi Thomas. Check out this table. My strong feeling is that we can of course prepare a "boring" paper presenting the project, and the first results + special section for interesting cases. However, for interesting statistics, we need really to fill in this table with precise results. And this is quite some work, no? -- Cédric 04:54, 19 April 2006 (CLT)

V1003 Sco corrections
Hi Thomas, thanks for pointing this out. I made the corrections of the date (there was a shift of 2 days each time??). Anyway, now it's correct, you can check the log page. But note that the available spectrum on the star page is that of the first observation, which has a very low S/N. Could you upload the much higher SN spectrum in place of the old one? Cheers. -- C édric T alk  04:44, 9 June 2006 (CLT)


 * Forget it, I did the re-upload already. I wanted to check how to do it, and it's a bit tricky actually. You have to go to the Special:Imagelist page, get the name of the file, and make sure you use this filename when putting the name in the upload page. It will tell you that an image already exists, and you can save it anyway. You can't do it from the star page, since the name hardcoded in the star template. -- C édric [[Image:kmail.png|16px]]T alk  10:26, 10 June 2006 (CLT)

Change of Category.
Hi Thomas. When you are doing quick-look spectral typing, could you update the category from Category:Unknown Spectral Type to the corresponding one? Thanks. -- C édric <font color="#006AD5">T <font color="#46A3FF">alk  07:10, 9 September 2006 (CLT)

Ooops, yes, certainly ;-) Tdall 15:32, 11 September 2006 (CLT)

Source of Paper One
Hi Thomas. Why have you uploaded pieces of text of the paper one without updating the page Source of Paper One itself, except by putting links to .tex files and with your signatures??? This is not very wiki-wiki like! Not at all, actually... Why not having simply updated the text of the page itself, and put it as updated file to be downloaded? This would allow to collaborate... Think of wiki pages as real documents to work on. -- <font style="font-size: 100%;"><font color="#006AD5">C <font color="#46A3FF">édric <font style="font-size: 80%;"><font color="#006AD5">T <font color="#46A3FF">alk  09:30, 14 September 2006 (CLT)


 * ok,ok,ok... It was the easiest way at the time, given that we know (or hope) that several people will be working to put a draft together, but they need not work on the same section... I'll put it together and make it wiki-wiki-wacky, ok ;-) Tdall 14:56, 14 September 2006 (CLT)

Answer to spectral types
Hi Thomas. I'll check the spectral types for the Summary Table (Paper One) once the ESO deadlines are over. As far as I remember, it is not always consistent in the star page. But my script might also fail to grab some types. I wasn't working much on this table since new observations are coming and Paper One isn't at a stage where it is critical. On the other hand, you may have noticed that you don't need anymore to download and upload the HARPS spectra and CCFs. -- <font style="font-size: 100%;"><font color="#006AD5">C <font color="#46A3FF">édric <font style="font-size: 80%;"><font color="#006AD5">T <font color="#46A3FF">alk  03:13, 26 September 2006 (CLT)

New wiki stuff
Hi Thomas. Some new wiki stuff to check out. Cheers. -- <font style="font-size: 100%;"><font color="#006AD5">C <font color="#46A3FF">édric <font style="font-size: 80%;"><font color="#006AD5">T <font color="#46A3FF">alk  08:19, 19 October 2006 (CLST)
 * Category:VSOP Policy is a new category... :-)
 * So check out the new page: Policy for wiki
 * I also created a page Highlights from P77 which is not very useful by itself, except...
 * ... that I was thinking about a "science highlight" in our Main Page, once the VSOP website is public. These could be then easily found from the highlights pages...
 * ... for which a category has been created.

Binaries, yeah...
Hi Thomas. Since worked out the FEROS CCFs, it was time to think a bit more about the categories of binaries... So I did. And I created quite a few categories. You can have access to them all in the menu to the left. I started to review the stars in Summary Table (Paper One), but before continuing, I would like your opinion. I did only the 10 first stars of Summary Table (Paper One). But I have some troubles updating the infoboxes of the stars. So my questions are: It is important for statistics... the more accurate we have old spectral/variability types+binary status, the more accurate we will be in assessing the usefullness of VSOP! The issue of single stars is quite important as well, since many stars fall for the moment into the Category:Unknown Binary Status. I think that's it for now. --
 * As for the Category:Variability Type, I created a category: Category:Unknown Binary Status. I think we must keep it to find the stars for which VSOP hasn't decided yet what is the binary/single star status.
 * I created also Category:Eclipsing Binary, since it is interesting, although this information is mostly coming fromn outside VSOP.
 * I created of course Category:Single Star, Category:SB1, Category:SB2, Category:SB3 and Category:SB4.
 * I also created Category:Binary Star as general category for SB1, SB2, SB3 and SB4. It can also be used for stars for which we can only say: it's a binary. Moreover, we might be interested to have access to stars that are binaries, whaveter it is SB1, 2, 3 or 4. (In the star page, we must however add both categories like Category:Binary Star and Category:SB1 for instance).
 * Of course, there is Category:Visual Binary.
 * How do we define a single stars? I mean, if we have a single-peaked CCF, do we say?: it's a single star. (In that case we add Category:Single Star). Or do we keep the doubt, and say Category:Unknown Binary Status? Because technically speaking, we should have many RVs to be sure...
 * In order to homogenize (and it is very important for 's work) the old binary status, I followed this set of rules as for now:
 * If there is no special mention in Simbad, I put old_binary_status=unknown
 * If there is a mention like "Algol-type", or "binary of beta Lyr", I put old_binary_status=Y
 * If there is a mention in Simbad saying SBX, I put old_binary_status=SBX.


 * Several issues here: What I've come to realize is that it's awfully hard to say that any given star is single. I don't think we can do that with only one spectrum, and whereever I did it, it should be changed - except perhaps if the old status is also single. And that's the problem: our VSOP "old" binary status are not complete. It only took into account the special mentions in SIMBAD, but what we need to do is actually look at all the catalog entries of SIMBAD and check if a star is listed in one of the double-star catalogs!  This could be done manually, but best would be to have a robot do it when the page is made. Most of the catalogs have similar categories (i.e. SB1, SB2, N,...). Don't know if there's a way to query those from the command line or in some other automatic way through Vizier.  A simple check would just be to look for the catalog identifiers on the SIMBAD result page, which would reveal the single stars, but we would have to query the catalog to get the detailed status for those actually listed in the catalogs.


 * Good news. Sounds possible with this. I tested it and it works. I just need to write a parser of the results. If we restrain ourselves to a simple "star exists in binary catalogue yes/no" it should be possible. The issue now is to list all relevant catalogues... -- 10:10, 14 December 2006 (CLST)


 * In that case (binary Y/N?) a simple SIMBAD query will do. Somewhere on each page it lists the alternate names, i.e. the catalog numbers for catalogs where the star has a number. For example, V491 Car will give 11 identifiers, including CCDM J09555-... and RST 448AB, and we know that CCDM and RST are double star catalogs, hence the star is a known binary. In this case it's a known visual binary, but the SB2 nature of the components was unknown.  So yes, we need to think a bit and check the different catalogs for what exactly they list (visual pairs, spectroscopic doubles,...).  Btw, I don't like the new SIMBAD interface... seems info is more clicks away than before. -- Tdall 15:09, 14 December 2006 (CLST)


 * Good points! We must stick to one single set of binary designations of course, for old and new binary status, in order to understand what we do and improve. What you mean here is that there not always the need to query inside the catalogue to check if a star is present (this is what I expected), but simply query all alternate names, and check if a name correspond to a known binary catalogue. This is very good point. One obvious thing is that if the star is inside a "binary" catalogue and a "SB2" catalogue, the better takes over of course, and "SB2" is retained. Now the only real issue here is the visual binaries. But I think we must simply state that the "old" binary status presented in VSOP is the binary status as available from catalogues listed in SIMBAD, at the time of the VSOP observation. no? -- 06:48, 15 December 2006 (CLST)


 * I fully agree with that. We still need to consider that for the visual binaries, we must check (manually?) which one we actually observed, although I don't think it'll be that many....only V491 Car springs to mind.  So given that most of the binary catalogs we encounter will be for SB's, we will still have to query inside to find the exact type (SB1, SB2, SB3...)  But surely, that can be done automatically, no? -- $\pi$


 * I agree with your feeling of SIMBAD4. Not much real improvement in user's experience. Bibliographic references are going back to 1850 now... :-) I guess behing the scenes there is much more improvements. For us, it also means troubles. We must revise how we make links to SIMBAD, since now name requests are not using the "GET" http method (where you see all parameters), but the "POST" method, where you don't see in the URL what you put. It means that we cannot construct automatic URL as we did before... I guess automatic redirect toward SIMBAD3 URLs will work for a while, but we have also to think about that. -- 06:48, 15 December 2006 (CLST)
 * BTW, I think it should be possible to automatize the retreivement of all bibligraphic references associated with a star, using SIMBAD again. Would be nice. -- 06:48, 15 December 2006 (CLST)
 * One last thing about names and wiki. I'm thinking about an automatic retrieval of all alternate names from SIMBAD, to be put inside the "a.k.a." infobox. I am also thinking about an automatic creation of all wiki redirect pages. I mean, take a star, and create one redirect wiki page par alternate name pointing to the original name. With this, the wiki would be more useful for somebody searching for a given name. What do you think? It does not cost much, although it multiplies the number of pages. :-) -- 06:48, 15 December 2006 (CLST)
 * One last thing about names and wiki. I'm thinking about an automatic retrieval of all alternate names from SIMBAD, to be put inside the "a.k.a." infobox. I am also thinking about an automatic creation of all wiki redirect pages. I mean, take a star, and create one redirect wiki page par alternate name pointing to the original name. With this, the wiki would be more useful for somebody searching for a given name. What do you think? It does not cost much, although it multiplies the number of pages. :-) -- 06:48, 15 December 2006 (CLST)
 * One last thing about names and wiki. I'm thinking about an automatic retrieval of all alternate names from SIMBAD, to be put inside the "a.k.a." infobox. I am also thinking about an automatic creation of all wiki redirect pages. I mean, take a star, and create one redirect wiki page par alternate name pointing to the original name. With this, the wiki would be more useful for somebody searching for a given name. What do you think? It does not cost much, although it multiplies the number of pages. :-) -- 06:48, 15 December 2006 (CLST)


 * Sounds like an elegant solution to a potential search problem :-) -- π


 * I like your categories, and I think they're adequate


 * btw, "Algols" and "beta Lyr" are both types of eclipsing binaries... yes, you'd have to know - SIMBAD is not very helpful.


 * -- Tdall 15:25, 12 December 2006 (CLST)


 * Hi Thomas. I think that for X-Mas, we have automatic look-up at binary stars catalogues in VizieR... :-) Check out preliminary results in AL Leo and BH Cap. More and more all this work make me thinking. Cheers. . 19:27, 22 December 2006 (CLST)

Time and future
Nice P79 time! OPC comments a pleasure as usual... I'm glad VSOP continues to get time for the 3rd time, but Paper One will make it fore sure much better. BTW, if you have a minute: User:Cedric/astrowikification. Single-shot thoughts. Haven't sleep on it yet. -- 17:31, 21 December 2006 (CLST)

V4385 Sgr
Hi Thomas. You provided a second spectral type for this star V4385 Sgr, but the binary status is still "Y", and not "SB". Is it because we see only 1 component in the CCF? How did you determine the F2? I don't understand, and we should be consistent with the meaning of binary status. Cheers, -- 05:50, 11 January 2007 (CLST)


 * Direct comparison with other spectra in the region dominated by the F-star. F2 could be F1 or F3 as well, but it's pretty accurate enough. I did not put in another binary status, since I'm not yet convinced about this star... check Paper One; I'm writing the section on it. -- π 17:54, 11 January 2007 (CLST)

Misc.
Hi Thomas. Thanks for the message. I know, Recent changes does not show Talk pages, and it is a bit strange. One more reason to upgrade. For Table One, I haven't done yet the work because I was quite surprised to see the actual amount of work was requesting to get something clean and decent results for the catalogues. And I reached another "plateau" in my coding, which means that I must start again to shape code into real classes and objects before it will really work. Anyway, since catalogues of stars in are done I can leave  for a while. So I'll work on. Note that I'm having a lot of troubles, and spent already 2 days with with Skype to figure out why I cannot commit changes into the Subversion system. To answer your question, yes RVs are inside the header of the CCF, and it should be also the case for FEROS. It means however that needs to download the file to get the value to update Summary Table (Paper One)... I will add all the columns you need. One last thing: you don't actually have to use the five ~ to get the date after your name. Instead of signing by putting yourself π, just put π inside your signature box in your preferences, and then sign normally with 4 ~s. Sorry, I should have told you that before. :-) Cheers. 04:25, 18 January 2007 (CLST)