
Date: Fri, 23 Feb 2001 10:41:46 +0100 (MET)
From: Carol Anne Oxborrow <oxborrow@dsri.dk>
Subject: Re: parameters
To: peter.kretschmar@obs.unige.ch, stefan@astro.su.se
Cc: smaisala@astro.helsinki.fi, allan, njw, juhani.huovelin@astro.helsinki.fi
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Dear Peter and Stefan,

while I agree that the 20A format for OBTs is very unwieldy for entering the
binning start time, I'm not sure that IJD is much of an improvement if you're
sitting with a raw file in front of you and want to do some binning. While the
automatic pipeline will have no problem converting an OBT near the beginning
of the SWG data into IJD, will this be so easy for the human user?

In all the fits files, OBT is stored as 4 floats, which is much less prone to
typos if it should need to be copied out. would it not be easier to use the
4 floats format to input the starting OBT for those people perusing fits files
and wanting to do particular binnings, possibly leaving out the noise or
whatever in the first part of the SW?

On the other hand, we already have two uniform parameter names, startRow and
endRow that can be used to define the first and last events in the raw data to
be used for event processing - couldn't these be used to specify the time
range of the binning, not by mentioning a time as such, but by locating the
event (and by implication its OBT) that you first want to appear in the
binning. After all it may well not be a time we're interested in but a
particular criterion on the raw events that have to be fulfilled. Just an idea.

Well, that's my two penn'orth on binning parameters.

Best wishes and a good weekend,

Carol Anne

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