MySQL for home use

[James Roe]

Hi all,

I'm starting to get down and dirty with this data mining stuff.  Photometrica is allowing me to explore some of my archived images for hidden goodies and I've already found dozens of candidates for further study from just one field.  The amount of data is already giving me pause and I'm thinking that I should use a relational data base (MySQL in particular) to put some organization into it.  I have MySQL running on my laptop (and a few other machines lying around) (and could help someone get started -it's easy) and a little experience playing with it using PHP.  BUT I'm certainly not the best at this and would appreciate help/assistance from more experienced hands.  Let me start with my view of the overall process and, please, comment on it.

We start with tabular data in the form time, magnitude with appropriate meta-data such as object and filter.Sources of this include Photometrica (for our own images), the AAVSO data base, ASAS, etc.  There are somewhat formal tools to assess probability of variability but I tend to rely on looking at the "raw" light curve to see if there is anything I recognize - especially repeating behavior.

Next, I import the tabular data into Period 04 and futz around with Fourier analyses trying to get a reasonable phase curve.  With an idea of the primary period, I then go into a spread sheet where I have a phase curve algorithm that I can tweak in small fractions of a day until I get a better (best?) looking phase curve.  With that I should be able to classify the type of variability?  Now what?  Am I ready to submit to VSX and put the data in the IDB?

If the period search is not fruitful but I'm still convinced it's a variable (maybe compared to a really steady star nearby) I would just flag it for more data.  Should it still be submitted to VSX and the IDB?

If I am energetic enough, I might play with Binary Maker 3 to get some more pretty pictures.

How does that sound so far?

Sticking the tabular data into a relational database seems straight-forward - what am I missing?

Table Stars

  StarID (what to use? An arbitrary id to start replaced later by the VSX label?)

  RA

  DEC

  Type (Enumerated, EA, EB, etc when known?)

  Mag Range (when known)

Table Data

  Index (arbitrary, unique, increasing)

  StarID

  Date

  Mag

  Filter (Enumerated B, V, R, I, Sloans?)

  SourceID

Table Sources

  SourceID

  Name (Might include telescope and camera description)

  Contact

 

Anything missing so far?

Right now I am planning to milk my archived images for candidate data and go on to analyzing individual stars at a more leisurely pace.  It would make sense to share some of the candidates with other analysts, too, if it gets too much for my remaining lifetime - which looks probable (given the amount of data I've already seen  - not my health!)

Comments, questions most welcome.

Jim Roe [ROE]

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