Otero EBs are going to take a few years

There seems to be 1117 of them.
So far I have data on 6 of them.
only 1111 to go.
It is going to take awhile. :neutral_face:

Iā€™ve been observing some of the Otero+ stars for many years now. My observing plan is that I am accumulating, say, 4 or more years of observations for each star (one eclipse time per year, +/-, two if it is eccentric). I pretty much only observe stars that are at declination above 60 N. My preference is stars that have ā€œlongerā€ periods, say 2.5 days or more (it is surprising to me how much observations drop off once you get above a couple of days period), and I especially like to observe stars that are eccentric (secondary not at phase 0.5). So, if you knock stars with those characteristics out of your 1111, there are some you might not need to observe! I have a first paper publishing some of these times of minima in for review, right now. Fingers crossed.

Oh, to check to see if one of these stars has been observed, I check to see if there is a Nelson spreadsheet with any observations after the discovery info, and I use the Czech VarAstro site: var.astro.cz/en The O-C Gateway site that is mentioned in the EB Section webpages has been replaced by VarAstro. Of course, this only tells you if the star has been observed and published. Many Otero+ stars have no followup eclipse times, many others just have one or two, 10+ years ago.

Clear skies, Gary Billings

I like that a lot Gary.
You can look at my pile and add it to your pile if you want. But I donā€™t have 4 years on this projects targets. It does seem to take a few years.
Donā€™t know if my photometry is up to standards because a lot of those Otero stars seem to not have comps magnitudes near the target magnitudes. Some are just good enouph to see the pattern.

Ray

I guess there could be various reasons. In my case it is (1) that weather in Brisbane near the central east coast of Australia often interferes with intended observing (at the moment it is Tropical Cyclone Alfred) and (2) I donā€™t have a permanent observatory. That means very few observations are taken (by me) on any one star with a ā€œlongerā€ period. Thatā€™s probably the most important reason for having multiple observers contributing to a database, but for me it is not as satisfying as having enough personal observations to analyse.

One solution is to observe stars with periods short enough such that taking time series across several hours on a really good night gives useful, analysable data. Thatā€™s what I decided to do.

Roy