MISAO Project

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April 16, 2000

    CCD images are welcome    

MISAO Project Announce Mail (April 16, 2000)

Hello. I am Seiichi Yoshida working on the MISAO project.

The MISAO Project Home Page is renewed in January and moved to the following new URL in March.

http://www.aerith.net/misao/

The MISAO Project aims to discover new celestial objects like variable stars as a result of collaboration, by examining CCD images offered by many people using the PIXY system. For that purpose, your CCD images are welcome. The new MISAO Project web pages describe how to offer CCD images to the project, the copyright of the offered images, and the rules to settle the discoverers of new objects discovered from the offered images.

The CCD images saved in FITS, MTF or SBIG format are welcome in principle. The image data such as approximate position in the sky, accurate date and time of exposure, used filters, etc., must be recorded.

The offered images to the project are examined by the PIXY system and new objects are searched. At the same time, the data of known objects like variable stars are measured, too. In addition, the examined images are stored in the MISAO Project database. When new images of the same area are offered in the future, they will be checked to search new objects. When an outburst or something happens, they are checked for the past data.

On April 16, 2000, totally 8461 images are stored in the database taken between 1997 May and 2000 March. From the images, 882 new variable stars were discovered. And 46152 magnitude data of 4340 variable stars were measure, which were reported to VSNET (Variable Star Network) and VSOLJ (Variable Star Observers' League in Japan) by the observer code of the MISAO Project, "Mis".

The new variable stars discovered from the offered images are named as "MisV" with sequential number. The image contributors of the conclusive images for the discovery are settled as discoverers of the star, as well as the MISAO Project staff who really discover it on the images. The names of the discoverers are described in the web pages and papers.

Very old images are also welcome to the project. Especially, old images are as valuable as the recent images in case of variable stars. If a bright star was found only on the old images and not found on the recent images, it may be a nova or something rare star. And this star must not be discovered if the old images were not offered and examined. When very old images are offered, compared with the recent images already stored in the database, and new variable stars are discovered, the MISAO Project considers the very old images as conclusive ones for the discovery and the image contributor of the very old images is prioritized.

In the MISAO Project database, over 8000 images are stored. If you are interested in the collaborated discovery, we will show you the areas of the past images in the database. Please make a contact to the image conductor, kenIchi Kadota (kenic-k@astroarts.co.jp). By comparing with the past images, new objects can be discovered from your images of one night.

P.S.
The past MISAO project announce mails are available at:

http://www.aerith.net/misao/

--
Seiichi Yoshida
comet@aerith.net
http://www.aerith.net/

Copyright(C) MISAO Project (comet@aerith.net). All rights reserved.