Subject: novae

From: Michael Strauss

Submitted: Mon, 21 Apr 2003 13:17:23 -0400 (EDT)

Message number: 110 (previous: 109, next: 111 up: Index)

Hi Mike,
  I never got a chance to thank you for sending out the nova writeup.
Are you in a position to give more details?  In particular, I think we
need more on cadence, filter choice, etc.  Your writeup ended with a
brief discussion of these issues, but I want to understand what
actually is needed.  For example, you talk about detecting 24 mag
novae, but these objects will be 5-sigma detections with a single
observation with the DMT; is that good enough?  What if we told you
you could get the kind of intensive observations you need but only
over, say, only 2000 square degrees?  

  In more generality, it would be very valuable if you could address
the full list of desiderata listed in lsst-general #102:


      The area of sky imaged at any given time.
       The total area of sky to be covered. 
       The depth and dynamic range needed in a single exposure.
       The depth and dynamic range needed in stacked exposure. 
       Length of individual exposures. 
       Requirements on slew time. 
      The requirements on seeing, PSF, and pixel size: uniformity of
        PSF, aberrations of PSF, all as function of wavelength.
       The filters needed/on what cadence? 
       The need, if any, to stack the data. 
       The photometric accuracy needed (both relative and absolute).
       The astrometric accuracy needed (both relative and absolute). 
       Tails of the astrometric and photometric error distribution. 
       The filters needed. 
       The cadence of observations needed (very different for moving
          objects and, e.g., distant galaxies).   Should the cadence
          be dynamic? 
       Requirements of sky darkness and photometricity. 
       Requirements on the speed of data reduction needed, and the
          nature of the measured quantities. 
       Auxiliary data needed (e.g., follow-up spectroscopy,
                observations at non-optical wavebands, and/or 
                a priori calibrating data)
       Specialized data analysis tools needed to carry out the
        science. 

				Thanks,  Michael

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