Description of data archive service

The description is written for those who are interested in using this data for solar system minor bodies discovery/follow-up or other scientific purposes.

This document was last updated on 2006 December 21.


1. Overview

The Lulin Sky Survey (LUSS) is maintained at Lulin Observatory, one of the best site for astronomical observing purpose in southeast Asia. The facilities include a 16-inch Ritchey-Chrétien made by RC Optical System, and a back-illuminated CCD made by Apogee, so it produces high quality data which can reach R~21.2mg. As the data may be useful for other researching purpose besides solar system minor bodies, the Graduate Institute of Astronomy, National Central University in Taiwan, host of Lulin Observatory, permitted LUSS to share its data onto the Internet. The data will be placed on the server of World Data Center for Astronomy, which host by National Astronomical Observatories of mainland China. The data for public will be in FITS format, each image is ~8Mbytes. They will be reduced by USNO-A 2.0 and with flat/dark applied.

Some detailed information will be listed here:

2. Observing modes and data structure

Currently there are five observing modes in LUSS (announced in LUSS Electronic Circular 78).

We strongly encourage users to use NS and/or QS as they are "standard" observations. Please do not use other modes if not necessary.

3. Query

As LUSS is a non-professional project, it's not yet fund by governments or any organizations. We are unable to take time to write an index and query tool for data users. However, we do have a plan for evaluating such a program in future. We will put news here if have any progress on this topic.

Now the users may have two ways to look up data other than viewing one image after one:

4. Note for potential asteroid hunters in LUSS data

After July 4, 2006, all data under "Scan Field" mode is proceed by automatic program, so bad reduced or 2-pass images only would not get proceed. It means there should be many undetected targets in the images. Some of them are known, but quite a number of them are new. To make it more convenient for potential asteroid hunters, we try to visit the same region several days apart, for an easier multi-night linkage.

Here are config files for Astrometrica: No focal reducer version or focal reducer installed version. For new comers, here is a guide written by Marco Langbroak about how to recover and discover new asteroids in SkyMorph database, which is quite similar to LUSS archive besides a powerful query tool.

But different from SkyMorph, we do give the credit to the volunteer if he or she could managed to discover new minor bodies in LUSS archive. That is, if his/her discoveries become numbered, the volunteer has the "naming right". In such case, the discoverer should sent the citation to us and we will forward it to CSBN.

5. Acknowledgement

If you have used our data for serious work, please let us know, and acknowledge the data is produced by Lulin Sky Survey, which is supported by Graduate Institute of Astronomy, National Central University in Taiwan.

If you have questions and/or suggestions on LUSS data archive, feel free to contact our Principal Investigator, Quanzhi Ye at [email protected]. More information will be put on this page if necessary, keep on checking.


(c) Copyright 2006-2008 Lulin Sky Survey

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