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Tales of Cataloguing VIII -- the log of jumping up & down



 
 
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Old November 7th 13, 09:03 AM posted to sci.astro.research
Eric Flesch
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Default Tales of Cataloguing VIII -- the log of jumping up & down

Doing final tidy-ups for the final time -- yeah, right. Move a few,
de-dup a few, then I find this:

Q 2112.8+0594, a quasar catalogued in VCV13 onto an entirely
unsuitable optical signature at 21 15 18.0 +06 08 32. What's more,
there's a fine-looking R=18.6 B=18.6 just 23 arcsec away at 21 15 16.6
+06 08 41, and it has X-ray 3XMM J211516.5+060840 too! OK, let's take
a closer look.

The original paper is, hmm, 1991-ApJS-76-455, Ellingson/Yee/Green.
Does that ring a bell? It does! That paper has a bogus finding chart
for Q 2347+005 on the last page -- I annotated that in my paper
2013-PASA-30-4 -- their finding chart was wrong, but the co-ordinates
in their very large Table 3 were right, so the correct object was able
to be retrieved. They couldn't have done that twice in one paper,
could they? Let's see...

There it is, last page of the paper again, first finding chart on it,
2112+059. Hmm, VCV13 was right about the object they marked on the
finding chart. So, let's look at the massive Table 3, page 468 (huff
puff), last section, 2112+059, says (B1950) 12 12 47.50 +5 56 10.0.
Looked at this for a while before it dawned on me that it's supposed
to say RAh=21, not RAh=12. Heh, OK, let's correct that and transform
it to J2000 -- 21 15 16.6 +06 08 41 -- BANG!!!

Well waddayaknow, my X-ray object is the one they meant! Boy they
sure did a great job hiding it. Hid it for 22 years, until now. Hey,
what was the story with those finding charts on the last page? Late
with the manuscript, publisher awaits? Just mark anything and get it
out the door? Sheesh!

I could tell more stories about duplicates etc but mindful that only
the deranged could care... (that's me, by now :-)

Eric
  #2  
Old November 22nd 13, 08:05 AM posted to sci.astro.research
Steve Willner
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Posts: 1,172
Default Tales of Cataloguing VIII -- the log of jumping up & down

In article ,
Eric Flesch writes:
what was the story with those finding charts on the last page? Late
with the manuscript, publisher awaits? Just mark anything and get it
out the door? Sheesh!


Well, a blunder is a blunder; no excuse then or now. Still, things
were a lot harder in the old days with no electronic help. Finding
charts were made by hand measurements using Palomar Observatory Sky
Survey prints on which one arcminute is less than a millimeter. For
most telescopes, blind pointing accuracy was an arcminute or worse.
More romantic, I suppose, but in terms of producing accurate results,
those "good old days" weren't so good.

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Steve Willner Phone 617-495-7123
Cambridge, MA 02138 USA
 




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