Light curves in DAL
Roy Williams
roy at caltech.edu
Tue Sep 25 08:24:34 PDT 2012
I would like to point out that VOEvents have always been intended to
carry light-curve information; both the Gaia and LSST missions are
expecting to put light curves in their events. After a long discussion
in 2007-9, and an expectation of IVOA reaching a decision on a light
curve representation, we built the standard around the "utype" consensus
that was emerging.
Therefore section 3.3.3 of the VOEvent specification (*) defines the
<Table> element, based on a simplification of VOTable, where ucd and
utype carry the semantic information. The intention was to put the light
curves in such a Table structure.
I would be very disappointed to have SimpleTimeSeries come back, with
its IVOA-incompatible time standards, its assumption that all time
series are optical light curves, the assumption that all time series are
measured in magnitudes, and its complicated non-tabular representation
where magnitude error is first class quantity.
Please can the IVOA just use a table with semantics via utypes, as we
were promised years ago?
Roy Williams
(*) http://www.ivoa.net/Documents/VOEvent/20110711/REC-VOEvent-2.0.pdf
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Caltech LIGO
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626 395 3670
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