Subject: Cloud Camera data analysis

From: Gordon Richards

Submitted: Thu, 27 Mar 1997 13:46:17 -0600

Message number: 2 (previous: 1, next: 3 up: Index)

Eric Deutsch and I are interested in starting to compare data from
the 10 micron cloud camera, the MT and the 3.5m night logs.  I believe
that it has always been the plan to do this, but currently there is no
easy way of doing it.

Eric has been saving all of the cloud camera images, and I believe
that these also get saved with any MT data.  In addition, Michael
Richmond has a script that parses the APO night logs.  So it would seem
that we just need a way of knowing what nights data has been taken
with the MT (and has been reduced), so that Eric and I can sit down
and do the comparisons. 

I was wondering if it might be possible to set up a system that 
gathers all the pertinent data together in one place?  At the beginning,
I think we will just do some statistical comparisons, so we don't
necessarily need the MT and cloud camera frames, just the QA output from
them.  For example, the extinction values from the MT, the temperature
from the night logs, and the characteristics (mean, variance) from the
cloud camera, all as a function of time.  

It might be just as easy for Eric and I to gather all the data together
at once some time this summer.  However, if from now until summer
everytime MT data gets run through MTPIPE we could store the pertinent
information somewhere alongside the pertinent cloud camera and night
log data, then it might make the analysis a lot easier.

Please let me know if you think this would be a useful thing to do and if 
you have any ideas about how to do it.  I was thinking about something 
along the lines of generating a file like the following every night:

	MT info			 Cloud cam info			 APO night log info
	----------------------   ------------------------------  ---------------------
	exinction  seeing  etc.  mean  sigma  skewness kurtosis  temp wind sky precip	
time


Where info from the MT could be either just from r' or even all the filters.


This would be very valuable in terms of figuring out if we can use the cloud
camera to determine when conditions are/have become photometric, in addition
to being valuable as weather input to the SDSS strategy simulations.


Gordon
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