Re: Urgent topics: CFHT upcoming search nights & VLT followup

From: Michael Wood-Vasey (wmwood-vasey@lbl.gov)
Date: Thu May 02 2002 - 17:18:33 PDT

  • Next message: Robert A. Knop Jr.: "Re: Urgent topics: CFHT upcoming search nights & VLT followup"

    On Thu, May 02, 2002 at 07:01:19PM -0500, Robert A. Knop Jr. wrote:
    >
    > > easy-to-use supernova candidate numbers that you use to identify the
    > > CFHT supernovae (at least until you get them into the SNtrak database,
    > > after which we can use the C02-XXX name).
    >
    > Let's please DON'T do this!!! This will only make things more
    > confusing, the more names and numbers there are for supernovae.
    >
    > The solution is to *get* them into SNtrak. If you don't want to load
    > them yourselves, send me full data on the candidates and *I'll* load
    > them. Then they'll have C02-XXX names. Let's please not generate too
    > many extra names for each candidate, because it will only make things
    > more and more confusing.

    I respectfully disagree, Rob.

    After our experience with the last search, I strongly argued for such
    numbers at the group meeting today. It was very confusing talking to
    both the Subaru and the CFHT teams about the supernovae they had found
    and whether or not we had found them or whether or not they were
    entered into SNTrak since neither team had a consistent numbering
    system.

    Here's a simple question that numeric names are important for:
    Q: "[CFHT, Subaru], have you loaded all of your Supernova into SNTrak?"
    A: "Well there was that one at an RA of 12:30 and the other at an
        RA of 12:31. I'm not sure. Let me go check the list. Oh, wait,
        how should we sort our list to make sure we have everything?"

    Last time there was a lot of wasted time at the LBL end as we each had
    a paper list of targets and then checked things off. We just had a
    list of pixel coordinates on chips at first from the Subaru team, and
    then we had RA and Decs. But then they found more candidates and sent
    us a new list and we had to check and make sure we had everything
    again. With the CFHT search the numbers on the web page kept changing
    so again we couldn't keep track. This was much more confusing then
    just having multiple names.

    As long as each group has their own subtraction setup they need to
    keep their own numeric names which will be unique and yield a
    chronological order. No one else really ever has to or should use
    them in the general SCP context, we just need to be able to compare
    lists.

     - Michael

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