In article ,
Phil Fraering pgf@AUTO wrote:
Nobody knows what this means...

Have they tried looking at other stars with apparent magnitudes comparable
to Procyon but known oscillations, to make sure the instrument is working
properly for objects of Procyon's brightness?

Trouble is, there *are* no stars with known oscillations on this sort of
time scale (except the Sun). These observations are almost impossible to
do from the ground. Procyon was, I gather, about the closest thing to a
"known oscillations" star available...

(You really want similar time scales etc., because the data analysis needs
verifying almost as much as the instrument does.)

MOST definitely has observed several other bright stars by now. (The one
major limitation of the small aperture, in fact, is that MOST works really
well only on relatively bright stars.) And verification will surely have
been high on the agenda after the Procyon results. We can hope that the
next paper won't take quite as long to appear...
--
"Think outside the box -- the box isn't our friend." | Henry Spencer
-- George Herbert |