Photometry in VO Spectrum Model

Doug Tody dtody at nrao.edu
Mon Oct 23 08:09:51 PDT 2006


Hi All -

On Mon, 23 Oct 2006, Pedro Osuna wrote:
> it was me who proposed the photometry thing.
>
> It is astronomers who like to do this "strange" things Doug, like liking
> to share data in magnitudes rather than real fluxes. I can give you many
> examples of those cases (whether "sensible" thing to do or otherwise is
> another issue), but just have a look yourself at Vizier using the old
> UCD system to guess how many catalogues there are there with photometric
> points (for instance, Johnson J):

I can see that one might want to plot a spectrum in magnitude units in
a standard system.  A good question to consider however, is whether this
feature belongs in the user interface, where the spectrum is plotted in
whatever units the user prefers, or in the protocol.  This is similar to
displaying RA/DEC in sexagesimal units, while we use decimal degrees in
the protocol.  This sort of conversion is easily handled in the user
interface.

	- Doug



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