Plumbing the Depths – The problems of measuring eclipse minima
Presenter(s): Tom Richards
Affiliation(s): VSS, ASA, RAS, RASNZ
Session details: Friday, 2016-03-25 02:30:00, LT106
Abstract
Measuring the minimum of an eclipse light curve has practical and theoretical difficulties. The two common methods – Kwee & van Woerden and polynomial fitting, often disagree significantly. This talk will discuss various methods, their good and weak points, and when and how best used.
Biography
Tom was founding director of Variable Stars South, which turned out to be a good way of learning about variable stars. On the occasional clear night that weather south of the Great Dividing Range affords, he does CCD imaging of various variables from his home dome (while asleep in bed) then tries to find time to analyse the results. He was once a university computer science professor, but that didn’t help much in writing the scripts he needs.