naked-eye (freies Auge) observations

[Phyllis]

Hi All,

I have been updating my observation transforms to comply with the
latest proposed OAL 2.0 schema. The sample data file provide by Tom
has been most useful (thanks Tom!)

I find that the method for describing a naked-eye observation in the
schema seems unusual. Are those of you that have developed
applications that use OAL supporting naked-eye observations? Are many
naked-eye observations being submitted to deepskylog?

I suspect that changing the schema breaks application code and may not
be worth revising, but the definition as it exists now seems a bit
unusual.

My best to you all,
- Phyllis

[Wim De Meester]

Hi Phyllis,

DeepskyLog supports naked-eye observations. The way deepskylog does this, is
by adding a 'naked eye' instrument.
When importing <OAL> files, the observations without instrument are imported
as observations with the naked eye (and are added to the naked eye
instrument).
There are not that much naked eye observations in DeepskyLog, there are 133
naked eye observations at this moment (out of 33282 observations).

Cheers,

Wim

--
Wim De Meester
Katholieke Universiteit Leuven
Instituut voor sterrenkunde tel: +32 (0)16 327914
Celestijnenlaan 200 D fax: +32 (0)16 327999
B - 3001 Leuven email: wim.de...@ster.kuleuven.be
Belgium http://www.ster.kuleuven.be/~wim

[Tom]

Hi Phyllis and *,

When exporting a naked eye observation, the recommended solution is to
simply leave out the optional (!!) <scope> element of the
<observation>. You do not have to create and reference a dummy "naked
eye scope" in an OAL document. Import should assume that thre is
either a "real" scope given or none at all in case of the naked eye
observation.

By my somewhat less than perfect design, my code requires "something"
for a scope in all cases. To cope with this, there's a dummy object
expressing the absence of a scope.

The same goes for observations with unknown sites. I do not intend to
register "siteless" observations, but when it comes to importing from
existing data sources, there are collections of observations without
known sites. And our schema allows this as the site is optional.

Best wishes,
Tom

[Phyllis]

Wim and Tom - Thanks for the feedback.

DSP also treats naked-eye observations as having an instrument =
'None'. On export, no scope element is inserted into the document. On
import though, it seems that a naked-eye observation could be
specified in a few ways. I was contemplating whether that's worth
addressing. We could firm this up or leave it alone. How do you feel
about it?

- Phyllis

[Tom]

Hi Phyllis,

I suggest to leave it to applications what to to with a scopeless
observation. I feel no need to represent a naked eye observation in
the same way in all applications. E&T gives "Eye/Auge" as the naked
eye dummy's name ("Auge" is the German word for eye). It's bilingual
as the GUI is bilingual ;-)

Another possibility was to just leave the entry for scope blank at
all, f.e. in a list. The only point that's really important (IMO) with
the naked eyed observations is that an application is able to filter
them out for browsing.

In the XSL stylesheets I reworked for OAL2.0, the absence of a scope
is rendered as "Naked eye" in Englisch and as "Bloßes Auge" in German.

As far as naked eye observations is concerned, I feel no need to
change things or to give directions on how naked eye observations
should be represented.

Best wishes,
Tom