Magnitude Difference

Forums Variable Stars Eclipsing Binary Stars Website Magnitude Difference

#581015
Eliot Hall
Participant

Thanks Mark.

I’ve updated the website with a sort by magnitude difference option.  It calculate the difference in magnitude between the faintest and brightest, and then re-orders the list with the greatest difference in magnitude first.

The sort was fairly trivial; however I noticed that the GCVS magnitude data was more complex than I originally thought (I should have learnt this by now).  I’ve updated my catalog of eclipsing stars accordingly.

A few things to note:

  • GVCS uses Min1 and Min2 magnitudes this site just uses the faintest of these.
  • If the Minimum or Maximum magnitude GCVS is not in V or is missing then the star is omitted.
  • GVCS list magnitudes with a “<” or “>” indicating the limiting magnitudes I treat both these cases as the faintest magnitude.
  • GVCS also lists magnitudes in brackets i.e. “()” here I add this value to the maximum value to get the sites faintest value.

The intent of this site is to provide observers with just enough information to quickly decide which stars might be of interested that night.  As such compromises have to be made to simplify the catalog data available.  The links to the source catalog(s) can be used to get more detailed information.