[BAA Comets] Comets-disc Digest, Vol 44, Issue 15

Sun Jan 31 13:03:34 GMT 2016

Hi Richard and Denis,

Yea the BAA is by far the most productive organisation, and your analysis
Denis is probably correct.

But there are a couple of other issues that I think contribute as well.

1. All observations which have been imported previously to COBS from the
BAA archives have received the BAA association affiliation, indipendent of
observer nationality and the identity of the originally ICQ-reporting
association.

When we imported the ICQ archive we found that about 15% of the
observations were already stored in COBS (112 939 of ca 130 000 ICQ
observations). For these, the original affiliations were not overwritten
and thus the affiliations remain those of BAA.

ICQ observations made by already known observers received the affiliations
previously stored those observers, but new observers from the ICQ archive
received ICQ affiliation (therefore 37 000 ICQ observations in COBS).

As an example, in the case of Swedish observations, the total is now 1129,
of which 520 are affiliated to SAAF, 532 to BAA and 77  to ICQ. All these
observations were originally reported to the ICQ by the country
representative and all were SAAF members, so when we have got all
affiliations set right, the number for BAA will decrease somewhat.

2. Also, I found something I had not previously realised (but which Clay
Sherrod has reported), since it has been impossible to overlook the content
of the ICQ archive. Namely, a lot of (Swedish) observations
apparently never ended up in the ICQ archive, even though they were
submitted. One blatant case is Hale-Bopp for which only 14 observations
Swedish observations are present, though the total number made is ten times
as big.

So one significant remaining task is to go through our own archives and
upload the missing observations. Thus the effort that Jonathan has put in
to find and report historical BAA observations is likely crucial to fill in
all the gaps.

Probably many more observations are still in national/association/personal
archives around the world and need to be found and reported (again). This
is an importsnt task for national coordinators/directors.

But in any case, even if the country/association affiliations in COBS can
not presently be fullt trusted and we know for sure that there are
unreported observations out there, at least the observations which
are available for scrutiny have been assigned correct observer
identifications (and can be traced)  This is a good thing!

Best wishes,

Johan

söndag 31 januari 2016 skrev <comets-disc-request at britastro.org>:

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> Today's Topics:
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>    1. Fw:  ICQ archive now available via COBS (Richard Miles)
>    2. Re: Fw:  ICQ archive now available via COBS (denis buczynski)
>
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Message: 1
> Date: Sat, 30 Jan 2016 12:42:02 -0000
> From: "Richard Miles" <rmiles at baa.u-net.com>
> To: "BAA Comets discussion list" <comets-disc at britastro.org>
> Subject: [BAA Comets] Fw:  ICQ archive now available via COBS
> Message-ID: <AB4B70CA50B34117A4D9DDB64F6D471F at RichardPC>
> Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset="UTF-8";
>         reply-type=original
>
> Re. Johan's announcement below.
>
> Remarkable that the BAA archive of comet observations number 88,196   i.e.
> many more than any other organisation.
>
> Let's try and keep up the good work in the futrure.
>
> Richard Miles
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Johan Warell" <johan.warell at gmail.com>
> To: <comets-disc at britastro.org>; <comets-ml at yahoogroups.com>
> Sent: Tuesday, January 26, 2016 3:20 PM
> Subject: [BAA Comets] ICQ archive now available via COBS
>
>
> > Dear comet observers,
> >
> > We are happy to inform you that the ICQ archive has now been uploaded to
> > COBS, and that all those community-sourced but previously unavailable
> > observations are now freely accessible for inspection and analysis!
> >
> > The number of new observations from the ICQ archive is nearly 113 000,
> > bringing the total number of entries in the COBS database to 220 000. The
> > number of observers is over 2200 and the number of observed comets 1100.
> >
> > The best observed comet is C/1995 O1 (Hale-Bopp) with 15529 observations,
> > the top association is the BAA with 88 000 observations and the top
> > country
> > USA with over 25 000 contributions. The earliest observations stored are
> > of
> > comet 12P made in 1884. A statistics summary may be found at
> > http://www.cobs.si/statistics
> >
> > The observations which have been imported from the ICQ archive may be
> > identified with the ICQ## string in the publication code, where ## is the
> > ICQ newsletter no. where it was published. We have a few hundred
> > observations where the observer ID is not known, the ICQ format is in
> > error
> > etc. We are working to get these data imported as well.
> >
> > The country and association statistics are not completely reliable as
> this
> > information is not available from the ICQ; most of these observers have
> > received the association code ICQ and the country is unassigned. We hope
> > that the directors of the national societies who contribute data will be
> > able to assist us in checking the database to complete this information.
> >
> > We also suspect that there are a lot of observations in
> > personal/national/association archives which have not been reported to
> > either ICQ or COBS. We will be happy to import such data as well,
> > regardless if some observations may already be present in COBS. Please
> > contact us if you know of such data sets.
> >
> > Any observer with a personal account can login to their user profile on
> > COBS and check the country and association assignment to make sure that
> > their data is handled correctly. Please let us know if you have any
> > problems or questions.
> >
> > For the COBS team,
> >
> > Johan Warell
> > COBS Assistant Administrator
> > _______________________________________________
> > Comets-disc mailing list
> > Comets-disc at britastro.org
> > http://lists.britastro.org/mailman/listinfo/comets-disc
> >
>
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 2
> Date: Sat, 30 Jan 2016 15:12:51 +0000 (UTC)
> From: denis buczynski <buczynski8166 at btinternet.com>
> To: BAA Comets discussion list <comets-disc at britastro.org>
> Subject: Re: [BAA Comets] Fw:  ICQ archive now available via COBS
> Message-ID:
>         <1365636237.4012707.1454166771864.JavaMail.yahoo at mail.yahoo.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
>
> Hello all,
> The fact that the BAA has the highest number of comet observations in the
> ICQ database is probably due two circumstances;
> 1) That the BAA Comet Section has been in existance for over 100 years and
> has been a leading organisation for collecting data prior to the setting up
> of the MPC and other IAU bodies. Two Comet Section Directors ( Crommelin
> and Merton) were leading comet scientists in their day.
> 2) the monumental efforts made by Jon Shanklin (our retiring Director)
> during his 20+ year Directorship to collect visual comet magnitude data
> from observers world wide and submit these into the ICQ database.Denis
> BuczynskiSecretary Comet Section
> BAA
>
>
>
>       From: Richard Miles <rmiles at baa.u-net.com>
>  To: BAA Comets discussion list <comets-disc at britastro.org>
>  Sent: Saturday, 30 January 2016, 12:42
>  Subject: [BAA Comets] Fw: ICQ archive now available via COBS
>
> Re. Johan's announcement below.
>
> Remarkable that the BAA archive of comet observations number 88,196  i.e.
> many more than any other organisation.
>
> Let's try and keep up the good work in the futrure.
>
> Richard Miles
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Johan Warell" <johan.warell at gmail.com>
> To: <comets-disc at britastro.org>; <comets-ml at yahoogroups.com>
> Sent: Tuesday, January 26, 2016 3:20 PM
> Subject: [BAA Comets] ICQ archive now available via COBS
>
>
> > Dear comet observers,
> >
> > We are happy to inform you that the ICQ archive has now been uploaded to
> > COBS, and that all those community-sourced but previously unavailable
> > observations are now freely accessible for inspection and analysis!
> >
> > The number of new observations from the ICQ archive is nearly 113 000,
> > bringing the total number of entries in the COBS database to 220 000. The
> > number of observers is over 2200 and the number of observed comets 1100.
> >
> > The best observed comet is C/1995 O1 (Hale-Bopp) with 15529 observations,
> > the top association is the BAA with 88 000 observations and the top
> > country
> > USA with over 25 000 contributions. The earliest observations stored are
> > of
> > comet 12P made in 1884. A statistics summary may be found at
> > http://www.cobs.si/statistics
> >
> > The observations which have been imported from the ICQ archive may be
> > identified with the ICQ## string in the publication code, where ## is the
> > ICQ newsletter no. where it was published. We have a few hundred
> > observations where the observer ID is not known, the ICQ format is in
> > error
> > etc. We are working to get these data imported as well.
> >
> > The country and association statistics are not completely reliable as
> this
> > information is not available from the ICQ; most of these observers have
> > received the association code ICQ and the country is unassigned. We hope
> > that the directors of the national societies who contribute data will be
> > able to assist us in checking the database to complete this information.
> >
> > We also suspect that there are a lot of observations in
> > personal/national/association archives which have not been reported to
> > either ICQ or COBS. We will be happy to import such data as well,
> > regardless if some observations may already be present in COBS. Please
> > contact us if you know of such data sets.
> >
> > Any observer with a personal account can login to their user profile on
> > COBS and check the country and association assignment to make sure that
> > their data is handled correctly. Please let us know if you have any
> > problems or questions.
> >
> > For the COBS team,
> >
> > Johan Warell
> > COBS Assistant Administrator
> > _______________________________________________
> > Comets-disc mailing list
> > Comets-disc at britastro.org
> > http://lists.britastro.org/mailman/listinfo/comets-disc
> >
>
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>
> End of Comets-disc Digest, Vol 44, Issue 15
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